July/August 198'.
U.S.A, $3.9i
Canada $4.51
UK £231
a cwa
Publkatiot
O R L
rives
07
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Word
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Circle ]38 on Reader Service card
"93,
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74
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Introducing the Lattice MS-DOS C Compiler, Version 3.
There's never been a better time to buy Lattice C.
Professional programmers the world over have
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Try the new Version 3 C Compiler and C-SPRITE
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Circle 23 on Reader Service card.
■
Unbeatable SCSI Flexibility: No
other Amiga hard drive can offer
you: Capacities from 20MB to
760MB... plug-in compatibility with
optical (WORM) drives, removable
cartridge drives & CD ROMs... op-
tional networking capability... dual
drive compatibility with ST506 and
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hard drives with your Amiga!
A REAL Track Record: C Ltd
has been shipping Amiga hard
drives since November, 1986. With
thousands of units in use, you can
count on C Ltd's proven hardware
& software reliability.
Extraordinary Support: Call our
technical support line, and you talk
to the people who actually build
the C Ltd products. Each drive is
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The Industry's Longest
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One-year parts & labor warranty.
AMIGA is a registered trademark ol Commodore-AMIGA, Inc.
Circle 59 on Reader Service card.
723 East Skmner Wichita, Kansas 67211 1316} 267-3807
JULY/AUGUST 1987
CONTENTS
VOLUME 3, NUMBER 4
ARTICLES
Reaching the Notes:
Easy Access to Amiga Audio
ByRobRck
Simple and straightforward C routines
for getting at the power of the Amiga's
audio device; by a former Amiga employee
and author of the Programmer's Guide
to the Amiga and the ROM Kernel Manual.
A Musical Environment:
The SoundScape PRO MIDI Studio
By Ben and Jean Means
SoundScape's multitasking power and
open-ended freedom can turn your
Amiga into a complete, personal
music-production studio.
B.B.King:
King of the Blues
By Peggy Herrington
Is the world's greatest blues guitarist
two-timin' Lucille . . . now that he's got a
new Amiga?
Deluxe Music Construction Set:
Scoring High on a Scale of A to G
By Peggy Herrington
If you want standard music notation
to be your forte, or if it already is, you'll
score with DeluxeMusic from
Electronic Arts.
Suzanne Ciani:
Making Music that Sells
By Pzggy Herrington
Suzanne Ciani, reknowned writer
of advertising jingles, recording artist and
expert on electronic music, discusses how
she is using the Amiga.
Sonix: Once Upon A Time
There Was Musicraft
By Ben and Jean Means
Musicraft finally sounds, or: The happy
story of The Little Music Program Who
Finally Did . . . thanks to Aegis.
COLUMNS
MM Zeitgeist
An editorial for four voices in the
key of A.
info.phile
Stockpiling Your Software:
Amiga Hard-Disk Drives
By Mark L. Van Name and
William B. Catchings
A review and comparison of five A1000
hard-disk drives, with benchmarks and
conclusions.
COVER PHOTOGRAPHED BY PAUL AVIS
Amigaville
User Groups Extraordinaire
By Psggy Herrington
FAUG and AMuse are user groups that
make the most of their resources.
DEPARTMENTS
El Repartee
Go ahead . . . give us your best shot.
Hors d'oeuvres
Finger foods for the keyboard.
Help Key
This is a job for Captain Code.
Reviews
Superbase Personal
Texture
B.E.S.T. Business Management
Musical Accessories
DOS-2-DOS
Marauder II
Hacker
Shanghai
Mindwalker
Strip Poker
LJ What's New?
Millions of wonderful goodies.
AnigaWorld (ISSN 0883-2390) a an independent journal not connected with Commodore Business Machines, Inc. Amiga\torld is published bimonthly by CW Communications/Peterborough. Inc., 80 Dm
St., Peterborough. NH 03-158. VS. subscription rate is $19.97. one year. Canada J30.97 (Canadian funds!, one year only. Mexico (17.97 (U.S. funds drawn on U.S. bank), one year only. Foreign J34.97
(U.S. funds drawn on U.S. bank), one year only, foreign Airmail, please inquire. Second class postage paid at Peterborough, NH, and at additional mailing offices. Entire contents copyright 1987 by CW
Communications/Peterborough, Inc. No pan of this publication may be printed or otherwise reproduced without written permission from die publisher. PojuniMer Send address changes to AmtoMbrU, Sub-
scription Sen-ices, PO Box 868. J'anningrble. NY 1 1 735. Nationally distributed by International Circulation Distributors. AmgaWartd makes every effort lo assure the accuracy of ankles, listings and circuits published
in the magazine AmifpWorbi iissumes no resjKinsibiliiy (or damages due to errors or omissions.
AmigaWorld 3
THE WORLD OF
COMMODORE
The 1986 Canadian World Of
Commodore show was the largest and
best attended show in Commodore
International's history. With 35(1
booths and attendance of over
38,000 users it was larger than any
other Commodore show in the World
— and this year's show will be even
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World of Commodore is designed
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Commodore owners — from hard-
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Personal to Educational
Exhibitors: Write or phone today
to find out how you can lake part
in the World's largest Commodore
Show.
For information contact:
The Hunter Croup Inc.
(416)595-5906
Circle 176 cm Reader Service card.
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AMIGA?
THE LANGUAGES AND TOO
FROM MeTACOMCO, THE
LS YOU NEED ARE HERE -
AUTHORS OF A M I G A D S
J NEW ( MACRO ASSEMBLEB5 | NEW J AMIGA SHELU
Professional macro assembler, this is THE
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6B000 mnemonics, macro expansions, over 160
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AMIGA TOOLKIT 333==3c££
An invaluable suite ol program development utili-
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An enhanced command line interpreter to ease
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A last aod efficient ISO validated Pascal compiler
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Publisher
President/CEO
Stephen Twombly
James S. Povec
Editor-in-Chief
Vice-President/Finance
Guy Wright
Roger Murphy
Managing Editor
Shawn Laflamme
Director of Operations
Matt Smith
Senior Editor
Vinoy Laughner
Executive Creative Director
Christine Destrempes
Technical Editor
Director of Corporate Production
Robert M. Ryan
Dennis Christensen
Review Editor
Typesetting Manager
Linda J. Barrett
Linda P. Canate
Contributing Editors
Typographer
Bill Catchmgs
Doreen Means
Peggy Herrington
David T. McClellan
Manufacturing Manager
Mark L Van Name
Susan Gross
Lou Wallace
Director of Circulation
Frank S. Smith
Art Director
Rosslyn A. Frick
Circulation Manager
Bonnie Welsh
Designers
Anne Dillon
Direct Marketing Manager
Paul Ruess
Roger Goode
Production/Advertising Supervisor
Single Copy Sales Manager
Linda Ruth
Howard G, Happ
Production Assistant
Telemarketing Manager
Elizabeth R. Kehn
Ruth Benedict
800-343-0728
Advertising Sales Manager
Special Products Manager
Stephen Robbins
Vivian Manila
Sales Representative
Director of Credit Sales & Collections
Kenneth Blakeman
William M. Boyer
Advertising Coordinator
Heather Paquette
1-8004414403
West Coast Sales
Giorgio Saluti, manager
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Laura Livingston
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Marketing Manager
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Barbara Harris
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4 July/August 1987
Circle 16 on Reader Service card-
The start of a perfect
friendship.
WordPerfect for the Amiga
If you've been looking for a mily full-featured word
processor that maximizes the capabilities of your Amiga,
then meetWordl'erfcct. The same power and features that
have made WordPerfect the best seller for IBM PCs are now
available in a specially designed version for the Amiga
computer.
A True Professional.
Regardless of your needs, WordPerfect offers you
professional features to make your job easier and increase
your productivity.
In the office, WordPerfect lets you automate time-consum-
ing tasks, streamline difficult work, and maintain even the
largest documents. At school, you can focus on what you're
saying while WordPerfect handles the formatting. Even for
uncomplicated tasks at home. WordPerfect produces
professional quality results with simplicity and elegance.
WordPerfect bends to the most creative imaginations and
most demanding tasks by offering such useful features as:
Automatic Footnotes/Endnotes •Table of Contents
• Indexing • Paragraph/Outline Numbering • Macros
AMIGA is .t trademark of ( Jiinnindtire-Amiiy. Inc.
• Mail-Merge • Math Columns (with Four-Function Math)
* File Management'Thesaurus* 115,000-word Speller'Text
Columns.
A Perfect Match,
WordPerfect for the Amiga fully supports the Amiga
interface, including pull-down menus and mouse control.
Both the mouse and the function keys give you complete
access to all WordPerfect features. And, as you'd expect,
WordPerfect takes advantage of the Amiga's multi-tasking
capabilities.
In addition, the Amiga version of WordPerfect offers file
compatibility with WordPerfect 4.1 for the IBM.
Friends For Good.
So find out what full-featured really means, and get
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friendly a professional word processor can be. For more
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Circle 64 on fleader Service card
Zeitgeist
By Guy Wright
I don't hear any music. Or
not much anyway. I know it's
out there somewhere, I can al-
most feel a bass line vibrating
the floor, like someone's stereo
in the apartment below. The
sounds-and-songs side of the
Amiga hasn't blasted anyone
out of their chair yet, and at
first listen, you would think that
everyone was still waiting for
something. A peripheral, an add
on, a particular piece of soft-
ware. There are occasional snip-
pets of a tune done on an
Amiga, and each show or demo
has the obligatory keyboard and
loudspeaker doing something.
But where is the revolution?
Where is the tidal wave of ex-
citement that the Amiga with its
super sound chip and stereo
and sampling capabilities was
supposed to create!'
Background.
Mood.
Enhance.
Amiga music, speech and
sound is there, it just doesn't
come out and bite you. It is like
multitasking. At first you think
how great multitasking is going
to be: running a word proces-
sor, downloading a File and hav-
ing a spreadsheet going all at
the same time . . . wonderful.
But after using the Amiga for a
few months, you find that the
value of multitasking isn't really
running more that one program
at a time. It is the freedom of
switching back and forth. Start-
ing things, stopping things, paus-
ing things, starting other things,
rearranging directories, etc. It is
the difference between sequen-
tial files and random access. The
multitasking is invisible, yet you
use it all the time. (Just try going
back to another operating system
sometime to see how much you
use multitasking without think-
ing about it.)
The music side of the Amiga
is a bit like its multitasking in
an even subtler way. Like the
editing or directing of a film, if
it's good, you don't notice it at
all. The soundtrack is the same.
It adds to the film's mood and
style, only occasionally taking a
spotlight role. I thought, at first,
that there wasn't any music for
the Amiga. But then I started
thinking about the software that
is floating around here these
days and I realized thai I have
been listening to the Amiga
speak and sing and make
unique sounds for quite a while
without realizing it. I get an-
noyed at programs that simply
feed words through the SAY
function without "twecking"
them a bit first to smooth out the
rough spots. I criticize the pro-
grammer's choice of phrases and
words to be sampled and digi-
tized. 1 absently snap fingers or
turn down the sound depending
on the title screen music.
Now look at those last three
sentences. "Programs that simply
feed words through the
SAY. . ."! How many computers
do that? "Sampled and digitized
words"!, the sound effects, the
instruments, the music, the
speech. All these are taken for
granted because they are so
good. Trv doing them on any
computer of five years back.
When electronic synthesizers
first appeared, their unique
sounds were used more for
shock value than for their musi-
cal capabilities. Like a funny
sound nailed onto the side of a
song. In the past few years, now
that electronic synthesizers are
more common, musicians have
begun to integrate synthesized
sound into the music, rather
than onto it. That seems to be
what happened with the Amiga
and music. The people who are
doing great things with the Ami-
ga's sound capabilities are inte-
grating their efforts smoothly
into complete works. They are
not waving flags and pointing at
their creations. "Look, look,
computer music! Listen to this!
It's sampled sound!" Instead, it's
the voice of the beer vender
and the crowd noises and the
squeak of sneakers in EA's One-
on-Onc Basketball. It's the play-
ing of the national anthems and
the nauseating slap when the
cliff diver misses in Epyx's
World Games. The chanting and
other music in The Bard's Tale.
The theme music from The
Pawn, Mindwalker, Marauder II.
etc. There are and will be more
and more Amiga music crea-
tions that stand alone, but I
think that the majority of the
Amiga music and sounds are
going to be integrated into
other pieces of software. They
stand out by their absence on
other computers. And, perhaps
taking them for granted is the
highest compliment. ■
6 July/August 1987
You Told Us What The
Best Computer Baseball Game
Would Have
"Great graphics
"Relief pitchers
—and subs"
"I like to slide
—even head first."
"Let me see what's happening
on the whole field,"
1 want to play in the series!"
"I want to be able to throw
a lot of different pitches."
"Put me right at the plate
when I'm batting."
Here It Is,
CHAMPIONSHIP BASEBALL
With 4 Divisions, 24 Teams, Playoffs and a Championship Series
You've been asking for the best in
computer baseball games, and you
want it all— graphics and features.
We've heard you, and Gamestar's
Championship Baseball delivers. No
other product gives you the complete
sport of baseball like Championship
Baseball:
• Player Draft, complete with reserves.
• Setting your starting lineup.
• Batting Practice, Exhibition Game
and League Play options.
• Each division is tougher than the last,
so there's always a new challenge.
1 M \ M I-ION silir
BASEBALL
JV;*y
IbdiluMfhifp-HW -itiiH HHI-"
SAflffSfM
• You control all the action on the
field— pitching (8 different pitches),
hitting, catching, outfield relays, base
running, even sliding under tags.
• Player substitutions can be made
throughout the game.
• Division, playoff and championship
series play.
All this and much more in the most
complete baseball program available.
When you're ready to step into the
major leagues of computer baseball,
Championship Baseball's your ticket.
Nobody else gives you more.
For IBM PC, Tandy 1000, Apple He, He, Commodore 64/128, Amiga, Atari ST and 100% compatible computers.
To order, visit your local retailer or call 1-800-227-6900
Select your players from the talent
pool, based on their characteristics
and skill ratings. Name them after
todays stars, or anyone you wanL
Batting window disappears when the
bill s in play; so you can see continuous
action.
Determine the batting order that will
have the best chance against your
opponent.
Auriga screensshown; oihcr systems may vary. Commodore 64. 128 and Amiga are tndetUBlia orCommodorrElecironics Limited.
IBM is a trademark of In'.crnalional Business Machines Corporation. Tandy isa trademark ofTardyCorrxm lion. Atariar^^
Circle 74 on Reader Service card
Repartee
Zingers
This letter is in response to the
review of our product Zing! by Shel-
don Leemon, published in your May/
June '87 issue. This review seriously
misrepresented our product and our
company. Mr. Leemon made many
statements that were totally inaccur-
ate and were slanted to give a nega-
tive impression. Four other very
positive reviews of Zing! have been
published in other magazines. We
invite your readers to read other re-
views of Zing!, or ask other Zing!
owners about their impressions. We
are sure your readers unit discover
that Zing! is considered a very useful
and unique product. It is our belief
that Mr. Leemon did not spend a
reasonable amount of time examin-
ing our product before writing his
review. We believe that he did not
even realize that Zing! provides a
complete interface to the operating
system, and is not just a toot for file
manipulation.
Mr. Leemon 's review implies that
Zing! does not provide the conve-
nience of memory resident capability.
The back cover of the Zing! package
lists 20 items that are all memory
resident. With the multitasking
Amiga, you have complete control
over whether you want Zing! (or any
other program) to be memory resi-
dent or not. Zing! was designed to
take advantage of the multitasking
environment.
Mr. Leemon listed some statistics
for Zing! versus CLI that were to-
tally invalid because they compared
two operations that were not the
same. Zing! can perform the same
CLI operation he listed in the same
amount of time and vice-versa. Mr.
Leemon fails to point out that udth
Zing! a user can perform most opera-
tions many times faster than until
the CLI, and without the need to
learn the complex system commaiuls
and syntaxes required with the CLI.
Mr. Leemon 's description of the
Zing! File Information Window was
very incomplete. He pointed out that
the window displayed a great deal of
information about a given file. How-
ever, he failed to point out that the
user can very easily point at the crit-
ical data (such as the file name, pro-
tection status or file comment) and
immediately cluinge the data. This
unique approach is much more con-
venient and easy to use than the re-
quired CLI commands. In addition,
Mr. Leemon neglected to point out
tiuit the File Information Window
allows you to load the displayed file
into your favorite editor with the
click of a single button.
Mr. Leemon stated tliat "The file
program does absolutely nothing to
aid single-drive owners, who are
most in need of help with file manip-
ulation." This statement is abso-
lutely untrue! As stated above, Zing!
makes most of the file manipulation
routines memory resident, so that the
Workbench disk is not needed for
most operations.
Mr. Leemon stated that "The
manual is long on hyperbole and
short on explanation." The passage
he quoted was taken from a seven
and a half page explanation of one
menu out of the 15 programs for
Zing!. Hardly a short explanation!
The section was describing a feature
that Mr. Leemon fails to point out
in his entire review. This Zing! fea-
ture allows you to manipulate files
from multiple directories in a single
operation. To the best of our knowl-
edge, no other computer software sys-
tem provides the ability to copy a
portion of a tree affiles and directo-
ries with a single operation.
The vast majority of Air. Leemon's
points are inaccurate or incomplete.
This letter describes a few of the
more damaging examples. However,
the points that he neglected to men-
tion are even more ridiculous. For
example, he did not point out that
Zing! conveniently displays the avail-
able devices that can be pointed at
with the mouse for use with many
functions. But most importantly, Mr.
Leemon never stated that he tested
our product urith popular A7niga
configurations, suck as two or more
disk drives, external memory or hard
disks. Zing! is not copy protected,
and supports the use of these popu-
lar devices fully. The power and ease
of use Zing! provides becomes more
and more apparent as you work with
larger numbers of running tasks
and files.
Meridian Software is very devoted
to the Amiga and its customers.
Since releasing Zing! in October of
1986, Meridian Software luis pro-
vided updates, published a new man-
ual, enhanced the packaging,
produced a patch program to add
more flexibiltiy to Zing!, sent a news-
letter out describing useful hints and
tips, made available a special hard
disk version of the product, produced
a new product (Zing.'Keys) that
makes Zing! (and any other product)
much easier to use and has provided
faithful and continual support to its
customers. We appreciate the chance
to make our position known, and in-
vite Amiga World to publish fair
and honest reviews of our products.
Jerry Farmer, President
Frank Taylor, Vice-President
Meridian Software Inc.
While our reviewers' opinions
do not necessarily represent
lliose of the AmigaWorld staff, we
encourage our reviewers to go
beyond a dry command-by-com-
mand description of a product.
Considering the number of pro-
grams we cover each issue, it is
impossible to describe every de-
tail of every product in die
space alotted. The unfortunate
side of this is that a feature
which seems trivial to a re-
viewer might seem vital to a
reader. We feel a slightly subjec-
tive view is helpful to our read-
ers, for it provides a user's
perspective of the program's
performance that a simple list-
ing of features can't. As with >
8 July/August 1987
Circle 89 on Reader Service card
The Mirror Copier Can Now Back Up
A Disk Almost As Fast As Marauder II,
And It Only Costs About 25% More!
Marauder II is the most
powerful copier ever produced
for Amiga. It will auto-
matically copy ALL software
released to date , and It
requires nq hardware
modification of any kind.
It produces completely
unprotected copies of most
Amiga software faster and
better than any other copier.
No other copier can copy
as much software as
Marauder II.
Marauder II also has the most
advanced user interface your
money can buy. If you have
an Amiga you already know
how to use Marauder II. You
never have to reboot your
machine to use Marauder II. it
is completely compatible with
><$
the Amiga's multitasking
operating system.
Marauder II has been designed
with your future needs in
mind. As protection schemes
change you can update the
program yourself with our
unique "Strategy Files."
The Strategy Files are
developed as new software is
released so that you can get
them quickly and easily when
you need them.
Compare the features of
Marauder II to our
competition and you'll see
that Marauder II is quite
simply the best copier you can
get, at any price! And for only
$39.98 you can rest assured
that your software investment
is safely protected against
damage, loss or theft.
Don't wait, order now!
£*sF
Marauder II
Mim*
i
Duplication Speed
83 Sec.
1 Minute
46 Sec.
Upgradable With
Strategy Files
YES
NO
Mouse Driven User
Interface
YES
NO
Exit Without
Restarting Amiga
YES
NO
Runs From
Workbench or CLI
YES
NO
Makes Multiple
Simultaneous Copies
From One Original
YES
NO
Copies Itself
YES
NO
Copies The Mirror
YES
NO
Price
$39.95
$49.95
NOW YOU CAN SAVE ANY SCREEN, FROM ANY PROGRAM, ANYTIME WITH GRABBIT.
With GRABBIT you can capture
exactly what you see on your screen
in an instant, regardless of what
programs you're running. GRABBIT
works with all video modes,
including "Hold and Modify."
What's more, GRABBIT runs
completely in the background,
transparent to your other software.
GRABBIT is always ready for you to
use, even when you're in the middle
of another program. As if that is not
enough, GRABBIT requires only
about 10K RAM to operate, and it
supports dozens of printers.
GRABBIT is truly a productivity
power tool for your AMIGA!
GRABBIT is far superior to other
screen-printing "programs" because
of its small size and quick
performance. No complicated setup is
required, just install and go! Also,
GRABBIT doesn't require the screen
to remain visible during printing or
saving, and stopping the print
operation is as easy as starting it.
GRABBIT supports all standard
Amiga printer drivers. GRABBIT also
supports full color printing.
In addition to GRABBIT 's printing
capabilities, the package also
includes a powerful utility program
"ANYTIME." The ANYTIME bonus
program is a "Preferences" style
palette requester that allows you to
change any colors of any screen,
anytime! With ANYTIME, you are
NOW capable of customizing all
colors to match your printer's
hardcopy to the screen's colors.
Once you start using GBABBIT and
the bonus program ANYTIME you
will want it on every disk. You get
all the power of this sizzling new
software for an unbelievably low
S29.95 + *S shipping and handling.
With Key Genie — One Key Launches 1000 Strokes!
This amazing keyboard macro
processor is just what you need
to give your fingers a rest. The
Genie is always at work to save
you time and keystrokes.
Complicated or repitious
keyboard sequences are easily
assigned to a key you choose
through the Genie's Pop-Up
Macro Definition Window. You
can also load and save your
favorite macro sequences on disk.
Once saved, the macros can be
automatically installed at startup
to save time. In addition to the
Genie's powers. Discovery
Software has added a bonus
program "Turbo- Shell". The Shell
is an AmigaDOS performance
enhancer that you shouldn't be
without! The Shell gives you the
capability to recall previous CLI
commands with the arrow keys
so that mistyped commands can
he quickly corrected, and
frequently used commands can
be easily repeated. Fast
AmigaDOS command replacements
give you UNIX-style performance
from your Amiga.
What other software does so much
for you at such a low price. Only
$49.95 <- S5 shipping and handling
When ordering from overseas,
add an additional S5.00 shipping for
first class airmail.
11-1-86
gDISCOVERY 903 E. Willow Grove Ave., Wyndmoor, PA 19118 (215) 242-4666
"^SOFTWARE
| INTHHNA1 IONAL
AmlgaTM Is a registered trademark of Commodore- Amiga Inc UNIX Is a registered trademark of Bell Laboratories
movie critics, you quickly learn
who you agree and disagree
with, then judge their reviews
on that basis. According to Me-
ridian Software, our review of
Zing! contained technical inac-
curacies, errors of omission,
and missed the point of the
product. What do you think?
We're very interested in hearing
from those of you who use
Zing!.
— Editors
More Controversy
It was a great disappointment to
read Peggy Herrington 's review of
Money Mentor [Marcli/April '87, p.
88]. We realize that any legitimate
magazine must publish what it feels
is the truth. I have no doubt that
Mrs. Herrington reported the facts
as she mulerstood them. Yet her re-
view contains a few factual errors.
The new version of Money Mentor
will be in C, not Modulo II. (In No-
vember, when we spoke to Mrs. Her-
rington, we were considering
Modulo. II.) She claims that Money
Mentor erased information r rom her
disk. The fact is that Amiga liasic
keeps a lot of data iti the core of the
machine. When she controlled out of
the program, she lost the data in the
machine, not the data on the dish.
We have a bigger problem with
the tone of the review; it implies
that Money Mentor is not careful
with the user's data. We have over
1,000 users of our products and not
one of them has reported data tost
due to program failure. Money Men-
tor has an elaborate Verify Database
command to reconstruct the database
if there is a catastrophic failure.
Money Mentor also lias software
traps to save data if there is a soft-
ware error. The only way to lose
data is to do what Mrs. Herrington
did — reboot the system.
Money Mentor also has many
unique charts and screen reports
that the competition is lacking. One
third of the Money Mentor system is
devoted to graphics — a fact that was
not discussed in the review.
We realize that Money Mentor is
not a perfect product. The fact that
it was written in Amiga Basic and
lacks a Net Worth calculation are
serious flaws. Money Mentor is, how-
ever, under constant development.
Version 2 of the program will be
coded in C and have more financial
calculations. Version 3 will be a
complete financial management sys-
tem; it's due out by the end of 1987.
We would greatly appreciate a sec-
ond chance for a revieia when the
new versions are available.
Ken Colby
Sedona Software
1000 vs. 2000
I'm offended by what Bob Ryan
wrote in "Back in Front. . .Amiga
Again" [March/April '87, p. 17]
concerning "what the A WOO should
have been." Sure, Commodore's ef-
forts are to be commended on the
new 2000, but don't you think it's a
little premature to discredit the
A 1 000? When considering the
A20Q0, it's simply a question of
whether or not you want to fool with
IBM compatibility. It isn't beyond
CMllCreative^Microsvslcmsl INTRODUCES THE
XX Kickstart™ Eliminator
and
RAM Expansion Kit
CMl's Kickstart Eliminator and RAM Expan-
sion Kit is an easy way for the user to greatly
increase the versatility of his or her Amiga Per-
sonal Computer. By installing ROM (Read Only
Memory) into already existing locations on the
Amiga motherboard, you eliminate the tedious
loading of the Kickstart disk on every power-
up, and you make available an additional 256K
of fast RAM.
Five New Games For The Amiga
gfornDLP POKER
sanction
OCCTinr. rn DiicciO
3 rv C C i 1 1 1 u i u nuDjin
wswiiY Wf/r
5WOPER
10110 SW Nimbus #B1, Tigard, OR 97223 (503) 684-9300
Dealer and Distributor Inquiries Invited
Installation requires some soldering.
Kickstart is a trademark of Commodore-Amiga, Inc. Used by permission.
Circle 196 on Reader Service card.
the realm of possibility that very
soon, with the advent of Texas In-
struments' neiv four-megabyte chip,
A 1000 owners will be able to accom-
plish and exceed (with a front poly-
morphous plug-in pack, where the
512K expander now goes) wliat the
A2000 does. There are a great many
things, yet to be discovered, that the
Amiga WOO will be able to accom-
plish. 1 love my Amiga WOO and
must defend its superior virtues.
Stephen E. Franklin
Bossier City, LA
I like slots, so I think the
A2000 is superior to the A 1000.
I don't feel that saying so dis-
credits the A1000; it is still a
great machine. Trying to ex-
pand internal memory as you
suggest can lead to configura-
tion problems (where do you
put the memory on the memory
map?) and bus contention with
chip RAM. AmigaWorld will con-
tinue to stress the excellence of
all Amigas.
Bob Ryan
Technical Editor
Unintentional
Omission
In the roundup of Amiga
1000 memory boards (info.phile,
May/June '87, p. 40), the C Ltd.
aMEGA Board was conspicu-
ously absent. This was due to
problems encountered in ship-
ping one of the boards to our
reviewers and doesn't reflect
negatively on the aMEGA
Board. For more information
about the aMEGA Board, con-
tact C Ltd., 723 E. Skinner,
Wichita, KS 6721 1. 316/267-
6321.
— Editors
Correction: The number we
published for Kent Engineering
& Design in our review of
MacroModem (May/June '87, p.
72) was incorrect. Please direct
your calls to: 315/685-8237.
Send your letters to: Repar-
tee, AmigaWorld editorial, 80
Elm St., Peterborough, NH
03458. Letters may be edited for
space and clarity. ■
10 July/August 1987
//17
OUR AMIGA'S AMI
AMIGA
Introducing Xebec's 9720H
Storage Subsystem.
Because High Performance
Computers Need High
Performance Companions.
Okay, so you've got ail of this great
stuff on your Amiga. Now where are you
going to put it? A smart place would be
our place. The handsome, 20-megabyte
Xebec 9720H standalone subsystem.
Built to the highest quality standard in
the industry. Spaced specifically to meet
the design criteria
and to enhance the
multitasking capabilities of AmigaDOS.
And totally compatible with AmigaDOS
KickStart.
The Xebec 9720H. A high performance
companion to your high performance
Amiga. At an impressively low price. Just
$1095.00. Call 800-982-3232 for the
Amiga dealer nearest you carrying the
Xebec 9720H.
The Zero Defect Company
3579 Highway 50 East
Carson City, Nevada 89701
Circle 49 on Reader Service card-
ors d'oeuvres
Got an idea simmering on the back burner? Turn up the heat
and send it in. If it gets published, you'll receive, free of charge,
an AmigaWorld T-shirt. (Sorry, we ran out ofginsu knives.)
Format and Install
I have a quick mini-program that makes
data disks for me. Using ED, create the fol-
lowing file:
echo "Formatting Drive DF1:"
format drive dfl: name "Empty"
echo "Installing DFL"
wait 4 sees
install dfl:
echo "Installed copy finished"
Save this file with a name like FORMA1
and when you need it just execute formal.
(Make sure you have the empty disk in DF1:
rather than something you want to save!)
This saves a little time.
Bill Ott
St. Petersburg, FL
Kids Disks
While creating a disk of programs for my
four-year-old to use, 1 was faced with the
problem of how to keep him from opening
icons that he shouldn't, such as Amiga Basic
and BMAP files. What I finally came upon
was to delete the .info file for the file or
program that I didn't want available. With a
disk named TOY BOX, an example would
be: DELETE TOY BOXAmigaBasic.info. Al-
though the icon for Amiga Basic is not visi-
ble in the window, the program is available
for loading when another program is se-
lected to run.
Gary Elder
Kennewick, WA
Stop Clicking
I just bought my Amiga with an external
drive a few days ago. I really love this ma-
chine, but one thing did annoy me. If there
wasn't a disk in one of the drives it would
make this clicking noise every few seconds.
After a few days, it occured to me that all
12July/Aiigust 1987
the drive wanted was a disk— any disk. So,
from now on, if I'm not using a particular
drive, I insert a spare disk and the clicking
stops.
Sandra Keller
Haddonfield, NJ
Editor's Note: I know there are thousands of you
out there who just finished reading this and said
"This is one of the dumbest tips ever printed.'"
But remember, you had to figure this one out for
yourself at one time. Some of t lie !>est tips are the
ones that many of us take for granted.
Basic CLEAR
If you use CLEAR to allocate working
space for your Amiga Basic program (e.g.,
CLEAR ,150000), then try to run your pro-
gram twice in a row. You ma)' get an OUT
OF MEMORY message, even if you didn't
change the program between runs. If you
had memory to run it the first time, then
why not the second?
The cause: Amiga Basic retains the first
150,000-byte area while trying to execute
the second CLEAR ,150000 (it keeps the
text of your program in the first area until
it can move it to the second area). You end
up needing 300,000 bytes to run the second
time.
A solution: Replace the CLEAR ,150000
with:
CLEAR ,X
CLEAR ,150000
where X is just large enough to hold the
text of your program. That way Amiga Ba-
sic only needs 150,000 + X bytes to run the
second time.
A word of caution: Be certain that X is
large enough or you could get hung with an
OUT OF MEMORY message that requires
re-booting the system. You can find out how
large to make X by loading your program,
executing it in the immediate mode then
entering:
CLEAR ,Y
PRINT Y-FRE(O)
where Y is known to be larger than the size
of your program. The size of your program
will be printed (but add a reasonable
amount to allow for future revisions).
Ron Charlton
Knoxvillc, TN
Converting to 1.2
I thought some people might want to
know the exact steps to transform a version
1.1 disk so that it will use the faster file ac-
cess of version 1.2. Step by step:
1. Boot the system using 1.2 Kickstart and
Workbench.
2. Put a blank disk in your external drive
and initialize it.
3. From the CLI, type COPY C TO RAM:.
4. When it is finished, type CD RAM:.
5. Remove 1.2 Workbench disk and put the
disk you want transformed into DF0:.
6. Type COPY ALL FROM DF0: TO DFL.
7. When it is finished, type INSTALL DFL.
You now have a bootable 1.2 disk ready
In go,
Brian Whitworth
Los Angeles, CA
Deleting Directories
In the November/December '86 issue,
Vincent Lee offered a method of getting rid
of an unwanted RAM:C to free up memory.
I would like to offer a shorter method of
getting rid of any undesirable directory.
Type the following from the CLI while out- 1*-
le new
axiPlan
it s making every other
readsheet old fashioned!
The original MaxiPlan™ was named
he Best Amiga™ Spreadsheet of
986 by F.A.U.G.. the world's
argest and most active Amiga
iser group. Now in 1987, Oxxi is
sroud to introduce MaxiPlan
J Ius™ — the most advanced Amiga
spreadsheet ever. With even more
ime-saving innovations than the
iward-winning MaxiPlan, the new
vlaxiPian Plus includes Microsoft
ixcel ""-like Macros and Utilities.
With MaxiPlan Plus and your
\miga you can:
» Open multiple spreadsheets
and graphs
» "Link" data from any number of
spreadsheets
» Create a self-running demo or
nteractive multiple choice quiz,
ncorporating files from word
>rocessors and paint programs
> Automatically create reports
;uch as invoices and purchase
>rders
• Instruct a data entry person with
speech or written prompts
• "Recite" your data entries when
checking data accuracy against
source documents
• Export graphs via an IFF file to
any Amiga paint program
The MaxiPlan Plus Spreadsheet
features:
• 512 columns by 65,530 rows
• Function key commands
• Ranges or celts referenced by
"Name" or cell numbers
• Written or spoken notes that
attach to cells or ranges
• Password protected cells
• Easy-to-use pie. bar. line and
area graphs
• Up to 8 graphs per spreadsheet
• Lotus 1-2-3 compatibility
• 63 built-in functions such as:
— Financial IIRR. PV. NPV. FV. PMTl
— Data base llndev Find. Lookupl
— Presentation (Color. Style, Speechf
With the MaxiPlan Plus Data
Base you can:
• Sort on any number of fields in
any order
• Maintain up to 16 data bases
per spreadsheet
• Create merge files for labels or
form letters
• "Find" or "Lookup" any specific
record or records
With the MaxiPlan Plus Macros
you can:
• Define up to 32 macros for any
spreadsheet
• Activate macros with a single
key stroke
• Automatically generate macros
under record mode
• Use over 70 different macro
commands
• Create templates for data entry
• Incorporate speech to instruct,
remind or inform user
MaxiPlan Plus™
SI 99.
at your local Amiga software
dealer.
Oxxifec
18J5-A/Dawns Way
Fullerton. CA9263I
(7(41999-6710
MaxiPlan
Named the best Amiga spreadsheet
of I98t> for its outstanding mouse
interfaces, unique pull-down menus
and advanced speech capabilities.
on Reader Sefvce card
side the directory to be deleted:
DELETE pathname ALL
where pathname is the full pathname of the
directory that you want to delete. This com-
mand will delete all files and subdirectories
under the directory named and then delete
the directory itself.
For example, suppose you wish to elimi-
nate RAM:C. After removing yourself from
RAM:C (using CD), type DELETE RAM:C
AIT. All files in RAM:C will be erased, and
then the directory will be removed. This
will work with disk files as well. If you type:
DELETE DFO-.C ALL with a Workbench disk
in the internal drive, the C directory will be
erased. While this is really useful for editing
disks, it is very fast and not reversible, so be
careful and make sure that you want to do
it before pressing that Return key!
Homer Luman
Odessa, TX
RAM Disk Speed-up
I use a RAM disk all the time and I found
a way to speed up the time it takes to create
one. My usual execute file that created a
RAM disk and stored my personal list of
commands used to take about 49 seconds to
load, but when I rearranged it so that the
ASSIGN C: RAM:C command came at the
beginning of the file, I cut the time down to
30 seconds. For example:
makedir ram:c
copy sysx/copy to ramx
assign c: ramx
copy sysx/cd to ramx
Using this method means that the more
commands you add to the RAM disk the
more of a speed increase you will notice.
Another note, the reason for the "SYS:C?"
prefixes is so that this command will work
no matter what the current directory is.
Mike Mayberry
San Jose, CA
Emulator Speedup
Like many others, I too have struggled
with improving the speed of the Emulator/
Transformer. I found an answer in my copy
of the IBM DOS Reference manual (version
3.10) on pages 4-3 to 4-25 (IBM Publishing,
February '85). Several "industrial strengtfi"
programs require changing the number of
Buffers and Files, but changing the Device
to use the "ANSI.SYS" is suggested only if
the keyboard is non-standard, which is the
case with the Amiga.
Here is the exact set of commands:
COPY CON CONFIG.SYS
BUFFERS = 20
DEVICE = ANSI.SYS
FILES = 20
{F6} or {CTRL-Z}
As the Reference manual says, after the first
line of the above command, there is no
standard prompt; it reappears after the last
line and a report on the number of files
copied. This change in my boot-up DOS
speeded things up remarkably.
Thank you and your readers for the sug-
gestion about "SPEED3.COM." I now have
it in an "AUTOEXE.BAT" file on my DOS
disk, in addition to the "CONFIG.SYS" re-
sulting in a greater speed and responsive-
ness when in the emulation mode. Clocks
displayed on the screen in some of the pro-
grams now lose only about five minutes per
hour (my way of judging operating speed).
Charles Gibson
Lomita, CA
Extra Help Screens
Like James Nakakihara (January/February
'87), I use ED a lot, relying on the basic
commands that I can remember from the
AmigaDOS manual. I am usually in too
much of a hurry to look to see if there is a
command to do something directly. And I
didn't want to make up a table for my desk,
since there already are too many things
piled up around here vying for space with
the mouse. After reading J.K.'s suggestion, I
typed up a help screen, organized by func-
tion, CURSOR, DELETE, BLOCKS, etc.
Everything I needed fit on one screen, but I
knew that I would need at least two screens
for a functional list of commands in Scrib-
ble! Fortunately, there are easy ways to get
as many help screens as you want.
For working with ED, make up text files
and save them on your Workbench disk as
EdHelpl, EdHelp2, etc. At the 1> prompt
type NEWCLI. You will get a small window
with a 2> prompt. Open it up to full size
and type TYPE EDHELP1 to display your
help screen. You can now use the depth
gadget to put it behind the 1> window
where you can then ED WORKFILE to go
to work. If you need more than one help
screen, just type NEWCLI again from the
1> prompt to get another window, open it
up and at the 3> prompt, type TYPE
EDHELP2. Now you can have as many help
screens as you like all running behind each
other in different windows.
If you want to have a convenient help
screen for a word processor like Scribble!,
just type up your custom screen and save it
as Help.doc on your Scribble! disk. When
you go to work, open an extra window and
load Help.doc in that window. Since the
word processor makes it easy to scroll
through a text, your Help.doc can be sev-
eral screens long and you will still be able
to get to it all easily. Now when you need to
refer to the help screen, just press F5 to flip
between the window where you are working
and the Help.doc on the other window.
Robert Jenkins, Ph.D.
Chicago Heights, II.
Inexpensive Video Camera
For those who want a cheaper video cam-
era for use with Digi-View, I suggest a Mag-
navox Home Security camera. It is sold
through DAK Industries, 8200 Remmet
Ave., Canoga Park, CA 91304, 800/325-0800.
Each camera, with microphone, 57-foot ca-
ble and mounting stand is only $169 com-
pared to Panasonic's $280 model. This may
be helpful to those wanting to utilize the
powerful Digi-View system.
John Urman
Omaha, NE
Window Title Spaces
Without any manual on hand except the
Introduction to Amiga, it took me a long time
to figure out how to put a space in the title
of a window. If you try to open a window
with a name like "New CLI," you will proba-
bly get an "Invalid Argument" error be-
cause the DOS sees the space as a
delimeter. A simple way around this prob-
lem is to use the ALT key/space (or Ctrl-N if
you are in the alternate character set). So
all you have to do is press and hold the
ALT key while pressing the space bar, and
the Amiga will accept it.
Kenneth Fhk-kin Wong
Los Angeles, CA
Execute in S
If you use AmigaDOS Execute files a lot,
you may be surprised to learn that an Exe-
cute file, placed in the S directory on the
Workbench, will be accessible, no matter
what the current directory may be. You can
move a file to the "Sequence" directory
with COPY file TOS:>
14July/August 198?
tf-fk
Use the Brains your
Commodore wasnt Born With.
Right at Your Fingertips
in CompuServe's
Commodore* Forums
Our Commodore Forums involve
thousands of Commodore users world-
wide. These forums show you just how
easy and fun it is to get the most from
your Commodore Computer.
The Commodore Communications
Forum provides the latest news on com-
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effective telecommunications.
The Commodore Programming
Forum supports programmers and
developers of Commodore 8-bit
computers.
The Commodore Arts and Games
Forum is for all Commodore 8-bit
computers, concentrating on music,
graphics and games.
The Commodore Amiga* Forum is
the national resource for all business
and entertainment applications in the
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including FREE uploads.
• Download first-rate, non-commercial user-
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• Upload your own programs free of connect
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• Take advantage of CompuServe's inexpen-
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• Go online in most major metropolitan areas
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Information you simply can't find
anywhere else.
Use the Forum Message Board to
exchange mail with fellow members.
Join ongoing, real-time discussions in a
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Libraries for free software, docu- -
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Circle 53 on Reader Service card.
Enjoy other useful services, too. Like
electronic editions of your favorite maga-
zines, newsletters and articles, including
Family Computing, OMNI Online and
the Electronic Gamer.™
All you need is your Commodore
computer and a modem , . .or almost
any other personal computer.
To buy your Subscription Kit, see your
nearest computer dealer. Suggested re-
tail price is $39.95. To receive our free
brochure, or to order direct, call 800-
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If you're already a CompuServe sub-
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to see what you've been missing.
CompuServe
Information Services, P.O. Box 2021 2
5000 Arlington Centre Blvd., Columbus, Ohio 43220
800-848-8199
in Ohio, call 614-457-0802
An HSR Block Company
You may also find it helpful to make a
second copy of the Execute command with
a shorter name. For example: COPY
C:Execute to C:X ought to do the trick.
Bryce Nesbitt
Berkeley, CA
Top of Form From CO
After printing a file to your printer, you
may find that the paper is not aligned to
the top of the next page. To send a top-of-
form code to your printer from the CLI,
type:
COPY * TO PRT:
then press Ctrl-L, then Ctrl-\, then
Return.
Bryce Nesbitt Again
Berzerkeley, CA
Shortened Commands
Here is a shortcut that I found useful
when using CLI. 1 went to the C directory
and copied a number of commands, giving
them shortened names. For example:
COPY C:DIR TO C:D
COPY C:ENDCLI TO C:END
•t«k»^.».W
COPY C:DELETE TO C:DEL
Now if I'm getting rid of a few old files, I
just type DEL instead of DELETE. It saves a
lot of time, but there is a price. Each com-
mand that you COPY takes up about one
block of space. You can RENAME com-
mands, but programs may need them under
their old names, so be careful.
Rigoberto Ramirez
Buckhannon, WV
Basic Baud
When writing my bulletin board program
in Amiga Basic, I was looking for a way to
set the baud rate. The following POKEs ac-
complish this:
POKE 14676018, 12000 = 300 baud
POKE 14676018, 3000 = 1200 baud
POKE 14676018, 1500 = 2400 baud
There are many other values you can use,
but these are the most common.
Gary Cbernega
Endicotl, NY
5%" Drive Steals 30K
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Reaching the Notes:
Easy Access to Amiga Audio
Simple and straightforward C routines for getting at the power
of the Amiga's audio device.
I
By Rob Psck
remember being asked in May of 1986, while working
at Amiga in Los Gatos, "Why didn't they make the
audio easier to use?" I didn't have much time to think
about it then; I was too busy documenting other things.
It made sense to leave the audio to the experts. It
wasn't until I left Amiga and started writing Program-
mer's Guide to the Amiga for Sybex (specifically the chap-
ter on audio) that I discovered the lack of information
on using the Amiga audio device. The question was
brought home to me: If the Amiga's audio is really so
great, why aren't many people using it?
I decided to write some audio routines [hat would be
simple to use. Reference books such as the ROM Kerne!
Manual describe many audio features, but demonstrate
only a few of them. Worse still, the demo programs use
the hardware directly, and I didn't want to do that! What
I wanted was to be able to queue up several sounds and
have the audio system play them sequentially while my
task went on doing what it was doing. Going directly to
the hardware meant the audio device would neither
count cycles for me nor queue sounds for automatic
play. In effect, I wanted audio routines that would be as
simple to use as this:
mai n ( )
(
/* ...program-stuff... */
InitAudioO;/* initialize everything * /
channel = G e t Cha n n e 1 ( — 1 ) ;
if(channel != -1)
(
PlayNote( channel , waveform, note_no,
volume , durat i on ) ;
/ * ... (more PlayNotes) ... * /
Free Channel (channel) ;
FinishAudio();/ i; " close everything down * /
Sound queueing can be done using the audio-device
command called CMD— WRITE, but I found no exam-
ples that used CMD_WRITE until I stumbled across
one on Usenet (repostcd from BIX). By putting
together pieces of that program and things I developed
subsequent to finishing the audio chapter of my book, I
came up with the library of routines presented here: a
Playnote routine in C, with support routines to talk to
the hardware. The details of device access and message
passing are buried in subroutines where you don't have
to deal with them. By examining the source code I've
provided, you'll learn how to communicate with the
audio device and to add enhancements to these
routines.
The Public Functions
Here is an explanation of the major routines in my ►
/•
.more non-audio stuff,
*/
18 July/August 1981
ILLUSTRATED BY DF.VIS GREBU
10
-t
.
For most of us, who
Just need to beep at
somebody, these
routines make access
to the audio device
simple.
audio device library. If not otherwise staled, all parame-
ters passed to the routines and passed back as return
values are long integers (32 bits). Sometimes a pointer
(also 32 bits) is used, and is shown as such.
gotchannel = GetChannel(channel);
channel — any number from to 3, corresponding to a
specific hardware channel on the Amiga. If you ask for
channel number — 1, it means get any channel that is
available. The function GetChannel returns the channel
number, or returns — 1 if none are available to you.
PlayNote(channel,waveform,note—no,volume,duration,
priority, message):
channel — a channel that you already own. If you don't
own it, the note will not play.
waveform — a pointer to the start of a waveform table
that contains 25(5 samples of a single wave of your
sound. Sample values range from - 128 to + 127. The
waveform table also includes copies of the same wave-
form, each having fewer ami fewer samples in the table
(128 samples, 64, 32 and so on). This waveform table
lets us stay within the allowable limits of the Amiga
audio hardware. In particular, period values of 127
through 500 are the values that let the Amiga output
the best quality audio. To gel an output that is of a
high frequency — because the period values are lim-
ited — each wave of the waveform must be output more
quickly. Thus the table with several copies of the wave-
form, each having different numbers of samples. See
the source code for MakeWaves to see how the tables
are built.
Note Number — Notes are numbered from to 95,
structured as eight octaves of 12 notes each. Each
octave has its own waveform table entry having a length
appropriate to that octave.
Volume — -Takes a value from to 64 where is
minimum.
Duration — specified in l.OOOths of a second. The
audio device accepts a command to output a specific
number of cycles of a waveform. I calculate the fre-
quency (in cycles per second) from the note number,
then multiply by duration and divide by 1,000, yielding
the correct number of cycles for that frequency. Thus
all notes play for the correct lime.
Priority [not implemented yet] — If priority is 0, just
queue the note. If less than 0, flush all current requests
for this channel and start this note only. If greater than
0, do not flush . . . the priority value is only going to be
used to identify the note number to you when the note
begins to play.
Message [not implemented yet] — Audiotools can send you
a message that contains an identifier of your choice
(the priority value) to let your task know that this note
has just begun to play. On receiving the message, your
[;\sk must repl\ to il so thai ihe audiotools can reuse or
deallocate the message memory.
FreeChannel(ckannel)
Frees a channel that you own to let another task (or
your own task, later) use the channel.
InitAudioQ and FinishAudio()
These functions take care of the background work,
such as opening and closing the audio device.
PlayNote is asynchronous: It queues up a note to be
played by the audio device and then returns to the call-
ing program immediately. (It does not wait for the note
to be finished before it returns to the caller.) All other
functions in this library are synchronous; they're com-
pleted before your program goes on to do some-
thing else.
By using these routines, you do not have to deal with
the audio device; vou need not allocate and initialize
message blocks and so on. All of that is built into the
Support routines and associated global variables. If
you're designing a high-performance audio routine, you
just may have to lock the channels and go directly to
the hardware. In such instances, use the ROM Kernel
examples as your guide.
But for most of us, who just need to beep at some-
body, these routines make access to the audio device
simple. They also provide a jumping off point for fur-
ther audio development.
Support Functions
The audio library contains the following support
functions;
error = StopChannel(channel)
error = StartChannel(channel)
Stop or start a specific channel. If a CMD_WRITE
arrives at a stopped channel, it queues and waits for
the channel to be started. A return value of means no
error. A return of - 1 indicates low memory. Any other
value is a direct return from io_Error. See devices/
audio. h for meanings of other return values. Stop-
Channel terminates any CMD— WRITE currently in
progress.
error = FlushCha?mel(channel)
If there are CMD_WRJTEs lined up to be played,
return them all to the caller (flush input).
error m ResetChannel(channel)
Reset il to its default values; also, flush a channel's
input queue.
error = SetPV(channel, period, volume)
Set ihe period and volume of a note ilia! is playing
currently. Note that there is only a limited range avail-
able for the period (roughly 127 to 500), so it is more
likely that you would use PlayNote instead, because
PlayNote can modify the waveform pointer as well as
the other parameters.
Internal Functions
These internal functions are used by the library func-
tions described earlier. Your programs may. at times,
need to access these functions directly. These functions
create, initialize and free audio device message blocks. I
call them IOBs, for I/O Blocks.
20 July/August 1987
such as Play Wave(ckaiiiwl,sample—iuldr,copy,period,
repeats,priority,message). Global variables would be
expanded to include a separate ReplyPort for the sam-
pled sounds. A copy (TRUEfFALSE) parameter would
specify (if TRUE) that the sampled wave should be
copied into chip memory before queueing it to be
played. If FALSE, it would assume that sample_addr is
in chip memory and that you will not change the con-
tents of memory before the note has completed
playing.
•Add a PlayFreq function that takes a frequency value
instead of a note number so that oriental music, for
example, not based on the same scale we use for a
piano, could be played. PlayFreq would take exactly
the same parameters as PlayNote, but substitute "fre-
quency" for "noteno". It would calculate which is the
longest waveform that can be used for the selected fre-
quency and still leave the period value within the
appropriate range of 127 to 500.
•Add an implied rest between notes to create a more
natural sound and avoid having to explicitly encode
such rests into a song structure.
•Add the ability to specify a slew rate for either volume
or frequency or both so that notes instead of going
directly from one setting to another can slide to the
new setting at a specified rate.
•Or perhaps better still, add full ADSR capabilities.
(This one is a little tricky. It could require software
interrupts or perhaps even breaking into the audio-
interrupt vector itself. It would also require a data
structure larger than the basic lOAudio structure to
hold these new variables.)
Conclusion
Basically, this article is a progress report on a continu-
ing project to develop a set of freely-distributable,
license-free routines that make it easier to use Amiga
audio. I welcome suggestions about additional
enhancements. (See the information below on acquir-
ing a disk with the source and object code.) I hope
this article and the accompanying code will help any
of you who are interested in easily taking advantage
of the Amiga's audio power.D
Rob Peck is the author of the Programmers' Guide to the
Amiga, published by Sybex. He was Manager of Technical Doc-
umentation for Amiga where he put together the Amiga ROM
Kernel Manual and the Amiga Hardware Manual. Write
to him at the address printed below.
Due to space limitations, it was not possible to describe in
detail each routine in the library. Rob has agreed to make
available a disk containing the source and object code for the
routines published here as well as updates completed before
publication. The disk is available for $8 postpaid for US.
orders; foreign orders add $2; California residents add sales
tax. Send your order to DATAPATH, PO Box 1828, Los
Gatos, CA 95031-1828.
Listings follow on p. 90
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22 July/August 1987
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iob = GetIOB()
Allocate or assign an IOAudio structure for use.
Returns a value of if system is too low on memory. If
no IOB is available from a specified pool of IOBs, then
dynamically allocate an IOB and pass back its address.
Note: for more advanced system functions this structure
may need to be extended to hold additional parame-
ters. For now, though, the KxtlOB structure is identical
to the normal IOAudio structure (created for now by a
define statement). This allows us to define an extended
version of the structure later, with little if any change to
existing functions.
ReEmploylOBQ
Look at audio channel reply ports and sec if any
IOB's have returned (arc now unemployed) and can
iherefore be reassigned or deallocated.
FreelOBQ
Return a finished IOB to the free IOB pool or deallo-
cate a dynamically allocated one.
In UBlock[iob,cha ttnel)
Initialize an IOB for communication with a specific
channel, default command is CMDWRJTE. iob is a
pointer to an IOAudio structure. Channel is the spe-
cific channel for which litis block is to be initialized
(allocation key is the critical item).
ExpandWave(waveformpoiriter)
Takes a pointer to a waveform buffer that contains
one cycle of a waveform, in 256 consecutive bytes, and
expands the table to add the same waveform sampled
128 times at twice the sampling interval, 64 times at 4
times the sampling interval, 32 times, 16 times, 8 times
and so on. The wave tables must be in chip memory;
otherwise the audio device will be unable to play the
notes! ExpandWave is associated with MakeWaves(),
which creates three tables total, one containing a
sawtooth wave, one a triangle wave and the third con-
tains a square wave. ExpandWave completes the table
entries for each waveform. All of the waveforms arc left
in contiguous memory after the first wave, in order of
decending sizes (256, 128, 64, . . . ).
MakeWaves. ExpandWave, SetPV and PlayNote are
paraphrased versions of similar routines found in a
posting to BIX by Steven A. Bennett. (Thanks, Steven.
for the inspiration on this project.) Steven's posted arti-
cle also provided the waveform and period tables I've
used, as well as the excellent explanation of the period
value calculation that I've quoted (slightly modified)
below.
As you examine the source code provided, you'll see
that the audio device requires a period value rather
than a frequency value. The period table contains the
period value corresponding to the frequencies of the
normal scale (12 notes per octave. See ABasiC manual,
page 138). You could calculate period yourself from the
formula: period = Clock /( samples-per-wave * frequency).
Clock rate is 3,579,545 cycles per second. So if you
arc playing a wave table that contains 32 samples, and
your selected output frequency is to be middle-A (440
hz) of the piano, the period value is 3579545 / (32 *
440) = 254.229, with the results rounded down for use
l>v the audio device.
More on Internal Functions
For GetlOB, you can control how many structures are
allocated for IOAudio use. How many audio ioblocks
should the system have available for queucing up
notes? If you want to queue up a whole song by using a
whole bunch of PlayNote commands and go away to do
something else, it could take a lot of memory! Once the
system runs out of these preallocated structures, it must
dynamically allocate and free memory. This can cause
fragmentation of memory space. You might want to send
pans of the song at a time instead of the whole song.
Depending on the variable AUDBUEFERS (defined
when the program is compiled), GetlOB either returns
the address of a buffer in global memory space, named
"global" (in the name field of the I/O message, node
area) or named "dynamic" if GetlOB runs out of AUD-
BL'FEERS global blocks to use. The number of dynamic-
blocks is limited only by the available system memory
(fast memory — that is, non-chip memory — is used for
the I/O blocks).
To be able to use only a standard-sized IOAudio
Structure for the message passing, 1 assigned the mes-
sage mnl<;ngth field to identify the global blocks. (As of
1.1 and 1.2, the mnLength field is still available for any-
body to decide what meaning it has.) To be perfectly
safe, as well as to handle the advanced functions that
people have requested, an extended audio block should
probably be used, with a long quantity appended to it as
the identifier in place of using mnljength, as well as a
few other fields. This change is very likely to be made
for ibe disk version of the tools. (The structure ExlIOB
will be used as an extended version of IOAudio.)
The Sample Program
And Suggested Enhancements
Using the above functions, audiotools.c (Listing 1) plays
a few notes through each channel in each of three wave-
forms: sawtooth, triangle and square waves. All four
channels are active at the same time. When all notes
have completed, the program exits. The program was
compiled under Amiga (Lattice) C and runs under ver-
sion 1.1 or later. The program runs from the CL1.
While working on this article, I gave a talk at a devel-
oper's group meeting. The following enhancements
were suggested at the meeting:
•Add examples diat use a stereo pair.
•Check that all error conditions are properly reported
("bullet-proofing" — this just has to be done).
•Implement the Priority and Message fields of Play-
Note as described.
•Add a PlaySong function that can take a pointer to a
data structure that describes a song, with some of the
parameters that PlayNote takes, and play the song
automatically.
•Add a PlayWave function to handle sampled sounds.*-
The wave tables
must be la chip
memory; otherwise
the audio device will
be unable to play
the notes!
AmigaWorld 21
a£i af&ru j6z*n£, .
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info.phile
Stockpiling Your Software:
Amiga Hard-Disk Drives
Buried under a pile of floppies'? Perhaps it's time to investigate
hard drives. Relax, AmigaWorld has done the hard work for you.
By Mark L. Van Name and William B. Catchings
IF YOU'RE TIRED of disk swapping and re-
stricted data access due to the Amiga 1000's
hardware limitations, then you're probably
ready for a hard-disk drive. In this
info.phile, we'll take a look at some of the
hard disks currently on the market that can
boost the storage capacity of the AIOOO.
We asked all of the companies that adver-
tise hard disks to allow us to review them.
Five companies submitted evaluation units.
The drives we evaluated are the Microbotics
MAS-Drive 20 and the C Ltd. Hard Disk—
the pioneer Amiga hard drives, and new-
comers from Byte by Byte (PAL Jr.), Xebec
(9720H) and Supra Corp, (Supra Drive).
These products are designed for the A1000
and require version 1.2 of the Amiga's sys-
tem software. Table 1 summarizes the basic
information about each hard disk.
More Where It Counts
Hard-disk drives provide much more mass
storage than floppy disks. All five of these
drives offer 20 megabytes of storage — about
24 floppy disks' worth! They run faster than
an Amiga floppy, so you do not have to
wait as long to access files. All of this power
requires surprisingly little effort. Once you
have a hard disk installed, you treat it very
much like a large-capacity floppy. You refer
to it as DHO: rather than DF1: or DF2:.
Though you cannot make a DISKCOPY of
it, you otherwise operate much in the man-
ner to which you are accustomed.
A few other limitations exist: Today, you
cannot boot from a hard disk (we say today
because many users have asked Commodore
to remedy this situation). You still must use
version 1.2 Kickstart and Workbench disks
to get your A1000 running. However, you
can edit your startup-sequence to ASSIGN
the system directories to the hard disk.
Once up, your system runs from the hard
disk. All of these drives provide procedures
that give you a new startup-sequence to set
up your system.
Things to Think About
The large space offered by hard-disk drives
is very easy to access. Because of this, and
because you do not have to constantly shuf-
fle disks, many users are tempted to ignore
the need for backups; this temptation is
augmented by the fact that making backups
is just no fun. But, do it anyway! Though
hard disks seldom break, when they do they
may lose much of their data. Such losses
often occur when the disk is jarred while
running, or dropped while being trans-
ported. The heads that read the disk plat-
ters can then crash into the platters, ruining I
Clockwise from left: The Xebec 9720H; Supra Corp. Supra Drive Hard Disk; C Ltd. Hard Disk; and MicroBotics'
MAS-Drive 20. Not shown: Byte by Byte's Pal Jr.
AmigaWorld 25
all of the files there. This is the equivalent
of 24 floppies going bad at once. Need we
say more?
You can do a few simple things to mini-
mize trouble. First, place your hard disk on
a surface that does not vibrate. Try to keep
it off the table where you keep your
printer. Second, never move it while it is
running. When you have to move the drive,
use the Park utility that comes with the
drive to disengage the disk heads so that
they cannot crash. Finally, back up all of
your important data files regularly.
Partitions: Many Disks in One
So far we have talked about hard-disk units
as if each is a single, large floppy disk.
While that is the default, you can divide
disks into several logically distinct units, or
partitions. Each partition is treated as a sepa-
rate drive, e.g., DHO: DH1: and so on. All
five drives we mention here support multi-
ple partitions. Partitions provide smaller
disk units, simplifying file management and
backup. If you often work with a small
number of files, keeping them in their own
partition can improve your system's
performance.
The main disadvantage to partitions is
the work required to change them. You
must first backup all of your files to floppy
disk, repartition and reformat your disk
drive and then restore the files. As format-
ting a hard-disk drive takes between 20 and
45 minutes, you don't want to have to set it
up often.
Using partitions also requires that you
make the appropriate entries in the Mount-
list file on your Workbench disk. Each parti-
tion must be large enough for the biggest
file it will ever need to hold, as no file can
span partitions. Finally, each disk partition
causes the Workbench to use additional
RAM to manage it.
Hooking Them Up
The five drives we looked at offer the same
basic capacities, come in cases that are ei-
ther Amiga-beige or very close, have their
own power supplies and can be set up
fairly easily. All use basic drive mechanisms
made by major manufacturers. Most of the
units use a controller that conforms to the
SCSI (Small Computer System Inter-
face — pronounced "scuzzy") standard. By
following this standard, they help ensure
that your system will be able to grow and
add other drives in the future, as the SCSI
standard is a very popular one.
Four of the five units attach to the A1000
with an adapter that plugs into the bus ex-
pansion card on the right side of the system
unit. If you already have other devices
plugged there, such as a memory-expansion
card, you need only attach the disk's
adapter to the bus pass-through of that de-
vice. If that device does not pass-through
the bus connection, put the disk adapter
first and hook the other device to it. Be
sure not to buy two devices without bus
pass-fhroughs, or you will not be able to use
them on your system at the same time. Two
of these four units, the Xebec 9720H, from
Xebec Corp., and the Pal Jr., from Byte by
Byte, do not pass through the bus connec-
tion. The Pal Jr., however, is an expansion
chassis that comes with the hard-disk drive,
1MB of memory, and one free Zorro expan-
sion slot, so you can use it without needing
other devices. All four drives work when at-
tached to another device already using the
bus (in our tests, a Comspec memory expan-
sion card).
Unfortunately, anywhere from 10% to
20% of the existing A 1000s (primarily ear-
lier units) cannot handle more than one de-
vice attached to the bus expansion slot; if
you have followed the directions for two de-
vices very carefully and cannot get them to
work together, you should contact your
dealer. If necessary, your dealer should be
able to help you get replacements for the
responsible faulty parts, although this may
end up costing you some money.
One unit, the MAS-Drive 20 from
MicroBotics, does not use the bus expan-
sion slot. Instead, it connects to the parallel
port on the rear of the A1000. It comes
with a parallel port pass-through on the
rear of the drive, so you can still attach
your printer. This design yields a slightly
slower data access rate, and the device can-
not follow the Amiga auto-config standard
since it is not using the bus. However, the
software supplied with the drive makes the
installation about as easy as that of any
auto-config device.
Installation
All five disks come with software that makes
installation relatively painless. Not all of ►
Table 1. Specifications for Amiga hard-disk drives.
Product
Cost
Capacify
Dimensions
(inches)
Adapter
Dimensions
(inches)
Power
Supply
Top or
Side
Mount
Attaches
To:
Pass
Thru
Auto-
Config
DMA
Access
Cooling
Fan
FCC
Approval
Rating
Works
with
Memory
Expansion
Board
CUd.
Hard Disk
$999.95
20MB
6.25x13x4.25
1.5x8x4.25
Yes
Side
Bus
Yes
Yes
No
No
Class B
Yes
MAS-Drive 20
$1495
20 MB
7x 14.5x3
NA
Yes
Sidet
Parallel
I'ort
Yes
No
No
No
Nunc
Yes
Pal Jr.
$1495.95*
20 MB
17.5x13x2.75
0.75x7.5x3.75
Yes
Top
Bus
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
None**
Yes
Supra Drive
$995
20 MB
5.5x11x2.5
1 .75 x 9 x 4.25
Yes
Side
Bus
Yes
No
No
No
None**
Yes
Xebec
9720H
$1095
20 MB
3.5x16.25x7.25
1.5x9.25x4
Yes
Side
Bus
No
Yes
No
No
Class B
Yes
*Includes Zorro expansion chassis and 1 MB of additional memory
**FCC rating in process
tAitaches with 6 ft. cable
26 July/August 1987
Actual unrc touched photos
DICI
VIEW
brings the world into your Amiga"!
w:
r ith Digi-View and a video camera,
your Amiga can see! Faces, logos,
artwork . . . anything you can imagine!
Simply point your camera and click the
mouse. In seconds, whatever the camera sees
is painlessly transformed into a computer
image that can be printed, stored on disk, or
transferred to other programs. Imagine how quickly and easily you
can generate stunning video art and animation when you start with
high quality digitized photographs or artwork.
Sophisticated software included with Digi-View makes it easy
to produce dazzling, broadcast-quality color images. Intuitive,
on-screen controls are as easy to use as the knobs on your TV. set.
Digi-View can capture images „, ,
, , . , .. The key to Big!-
in several modes, including / View* facmBbk
320x200 pixels with up to Lk coforresokifonis
r,nr\r 1 /..t u J^JL^^^^___ this color st'purti-
4096 colors on screen I hold- ■JT^™"" t«* filar ««.
and-modify" mode), and the | ; I attaches to your
incredibly detailed 640x400 I b^f^^m
k~___ or color nam
high resolution mode. Parana camum.'
• IFF disk format works with Digi-Paint 1 - 1 , DeluxePamt™, DeluxeVideo™. DeluxePrint. Aegis Images 1 - 1 , Aegis Animator, and more!
• Saves time! No more hours of freehand drawing and redrawing.
• Send photos over the telephone with your modem and terminal software.
• Capture images for scientific image processing or pattern recognition.
• Spice up business graphics — slide show program included.
• Incorporate photos in posters and greeting cards.
• Use Digi-View pictures in your BASIC programs.
• Catalog images with IFF database programs.
• Make red/blue 3D photos.
• A powerful tool for commercial graphic artists!
Panasonic WV-1410 video camera w/lens S2W1
CS-1 L Copy stand w/lights S 75
Only $199.95
includes video difytizcr module.
color separation filter, software and manual.
Orders Only 1-800-843-8934
Customer Service (913) 354-9332
NewTek
INCORPORATED
701 Jackson • Suite B3 • Topeka, KS • 66603
Amiga is a trademark of Commodore-Amiga. Inc. Digi-View and Digi-Riim are trademarks of Newtek. Inc. DeWftmt. DeluxeVideo. and Deluxe-Print ire trademarks of Electronic Arts. Inc. Aegis Images and Aegis Animator are
trademarks ot Aegis Development, Inc.
" Digi-View software version 2.0 lor ixrwr) required to use color camera. For minimum resolution use' monochrome camera with 2.1 interlace. High-res color modes require 1 Meg expansion RAM.
£ l986NcwTck. Inc.
Circle 102 on Reader Service card.
thetD follow the Amiga's auto-config stan-
dard, however: See Table 1 for details.
Though all the disks worked well in our
tests, it is, in our opinion, still useful to
stick with standards, since standard hard-
ware is usually unaffected by system soft-
ware changes.
Hard drives differ in the means by which
they move data between themselves and
memory. Most use part of the CPU's time to
handle requests to move information be-
tween main memory and the disk. One
unit, the Pal Jr., uses a technique known as
DMA (Direct Memory Access), in which the
drive can move information without bother-
ing the CPU. This approach requires addi-
tional, expensive circuitry, but it gives
better performance.
Table 2. Rnformarice Benchmarks
1 c
Ltd.
Hard
MAS-
Pal
Supra-
Dnve
Xebec
DF1:
RAM:
Disk
Drive
>•
9720H
Simple Tests (in seconds)
Copy C Directory
to RAM: from it
(bulk file read)
46
8
23
24
13
20
22
Copy C directory
to it from RAM:
(hulk file write)
147
8
25
36
24
24
60
Bruce Webster's Tests (in seconds)
DBench
262
72
129
176
132
132
140
DWrite
30
7
15
20
Hi
13
16
DRead
17
7
11
IS
10
12 j 10
FlSH DISK TESTS Written by Rick Spanbauer
All file read and write figures in bytes/second
File creations (/sec)
0...I
5
6
5
7
7
2
File deletions (/sec)
1
10
10
10
25
13
3
47
42
49
Directory scan (entries/sec)
36
5
51
45
SeeWread test (/sec)
17
51
55
36
75
53
48
Read 512 byte Tile
11702
201469
28807
14894
39125
22795
31968
Write 512 byte file
4818
131072
12977
10082
13443
16804
12192
Read 4096 byte file
12365
655360
34952
16697
55775
22795
37991
Write 4096 byte file
4974
262144
17712
9929
14894
19134
13239
Read 8192 byte file
12423
873813
34952
17022
55775
22795
38550
Write 8192 byte file
4955
262144
17712
10200
14894
19418
13239
Read 32768 byte file
12483
873813
34952
17133
56987
22795
39125
Write 32768 byte file
4964
291271
18078
10160
14894
19562
13306
Products are listed alphabetically by product name.
For comparison purposes, times are also shown for a St
Amiga floppy drive (DF1:) and for the RAM: disk.
jndard
Each of the drives offers some nice
touches. The MAS-Drive 20 comes with a
clearly-written single-page installation sheet
that really is all you need to get going. The
SupraDrivc and the Pal Jr. include a battery
backed-up, real-time clock. This eliminates
the hassle of setting the time whenever you
start up the Amiga. The C Ltd. hard disk
came set up with a number of dealer soft-
ware demos. It (and the Pal Jr.) included
one of our favorite graphics demos: the ani-
matcd Robot Juggler. Gel vour dealer to
show this demo to you. The manual for the
Xebec 9720H included a brief, but, for new
users, useful explanation of how to use and
maintain a hard disk.
Performance
A disk drive's performance is by no means
dependent only on whether it uses DMA.
Many other factors arc involved, including
the average access speed of the disk itself
and whether the data is moved via the bus
or the parallel port.
Disk-drive performance is an unavoida-
ble — and often emotional — issue, and the
one most buyers want most to discuss. It is
also one of the hardest to characterize accu-
rately. Different drives shine in different
areas, as a close examination of Table 2 will
reveal. Some are fast at reading data, but
fall behind the pack when data is written to
them. Others maintain moderate reading
speeds but write data more rapidly. And, no
two benchmarks ever measure quite the
same thing.
We ran three different, widely available
benchmark sets. The first was a simple one
ih. ii anyone can do: We measured the time
it takes to copy the standard Workbench C
directory both ways between the disk drive
and RAM:. These two tests reflect a very
common Amiga activity, i.e., moving com-
mon commands into RAM: to improve sys-
tem performance. They test the movement
of a large number of files that differ widely
in size.
The second set of benchmarks was
developed by Bruce Webster of Byte maga-
zine and then placed into the public do-
main. The benchmarks consist of three
components: dbench, dwrite and dread. All
three work with 256 blocks of 512 charac-
ters at a time, dbench writes and then reads
a sample File five times, dwrite writes a file
once, while dread reads it. These tests mea-
sure simple disk throughput in both
directions.
The final, largest set comes from one of
the public domain software disks available
from Amiga enthusiast Fred Fish. (These ►
28 July/August 1987
&ft
sap
mil
<
?*e
f?&*
r ua Pfa6/ e /* a <^etf 0| . T^/fl*
/OfTUJflRe
J 26 FOREST ROAD,
Inc.
FRAMINGHAM, MA01701
ea/ ef
Circle 10 on Reader Service card.
Amiga 'Tu&fk 'Domain Connection
iR,
O^^^ — OVER $15
OFF REG. PRICE
Each disk filled (880K!) with quality
tested, working Amiga PD programs.
APDC SPECIAL DISKS
« (X)l: Graphics and (James Choose this
disk for a sampling of the very best
of Amiga PD graphics, games, fun!
■ 002: Amiga Learner This tutorial disk
introduces you to [he CLI, explains
AmigaDOS commands, includes
examples of programming the EXEC
and in C. plus much more!
• 005: Amiga Basic The best
of Amiga Basic PD programs.
■ 031: Amiga PD Artwork A superh
collection of IFF format. Hold &
Modify, and digitized images.
GRAPHICS and GAMES
i 007: Mandelbrot Two graphics
generators plus excellent samples.
Assorted Games Our personal
favorite. Hours of absorbing fun.
(Jraphics and Animations Stars
and cubes dance before your eyes!
Sounds Make Amiga talk Hear
Spock and Danh Vader inside Amiga.
I 013: Interactive Graphics Catch the
flvinn balls and draw the Mona Lisa.
I 0OK:
HXN:
1011:
UTILITIES, PROGRAMMING
i017:Emacs Editors Current versions
of GXUEmacs and MicroEmacs.
i 018: General User Utilities AH the
best useful PD utilities on one disk!
1 021: Telecommunications The best
PD communications programs
with docs. Get on line now!
1 025: Programming Languages
PD versions of Forth and Lisp.
Individual disk price: S9 per disk. j/a
5 disk Special Offer $29.95
More than 5 disks: Add S5. G 9 per disk.
Add M Police Handling iS? ftrrcicn! Ca residents add "'v tax.
Order DOW*nd Mceiveaconipliine«Mij diskette hbfji>
case" ' N|v. :.i Offer of dcrs uilli Niinh American address otih ! I
#
#
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Name
Address
City
Stale
ZIP
FSB
>n and ^.'nJ with Liit'tk ur moncs otdfi ID
Amiga Tublic 'Domain Connection
1 4IMI Ml. ||l||,l. \ lr „ Hi.
Circle 128 on Reader Service card.
Companies list
C Ltd. Hard Disk
CLtd.
723 East Skinner
Wichita, KS 672 1 1
316/267-6321
MAS-Drive 20
Mierobotics Inc.
811 Alpha Drive, Suite 355
Richardson, TX 75081
214/437-5330
Pal Jr.
Byte by Byte
9442 Capital of Texas Highway N.
disks are commonly referred to as "Fish
Disks.") The test program was written and
placed into the public domain by Rick
Spanbauer of SUNY/Stony Brook. The pro-
gram performs many different tests. It cre-
ates and deletes many files, repeatedly scans
a directory for its entries, tests the time re-
quired to locate (seek) and read data in files
scattered purposefully around the disk, and
reads and writes files of four different sizes,
from 512 bytes to 32K.
Table 2 gives the results. As it shows, dif-
ferent drives excel on different tests, and
no one benchmark, or this set of three,
should be taken as a final authority. Given
this warning, the Pal Jr. system seems to
provide the best overall performance, prob-
ably due to its use of DMA. The SupraDrive
and C Ltd. units beat the Pal Jr. on the test-
file writes, but lose to it otherwise. The C
Ltd. drive is the fastest non-DMA drive.
Both the Supra and Xebec products turn in
reasonable times, although not generally up
to the Pal Jr. The MicroBotics MAS-Drive 20
provides the worst overall performance,
probably because of its use of the parallel
port rather than the bus, but it is not off by
much from several of the other drives.
Ail five units provide a welcome relief
from the slow speed of the Amiga's floppy
drives. Unfortunately, the speed gains are
only on the order of three to five times,
which is less than many users desire. This sad
fact occurs in part because AmigaDOS is ex-
tremely poor in its handling of disk drive 1/
O. While diere are many rumors of new ver-
sions of AmigaDOS with faster disk I/O,
there are no official statements from Com-
modore. In many cases, if you have the mem-
ory to spare, you can improve disk
Suite 150
Austin, TX 78759
512/343-4357
SupraDrive
Supra Corp.
1133 Commercial Way
Albany, OR 97321
503/967-9075
Xebec 9720H
Xebec
3579 Highway 50 E.
Carson City, NV 89701
702/883-4000
performance further with the AmigaDOS
command ADDBUFFERS.
Your Cup of Tea
Typically this is where reviewers tell you
that all of the products are just wonderful
and that you will do well to buy any of
them. We did it last time in our discussion
of memory boards. It is true again here. All
of these drives will improve your system a
great deal.
However, we will make two firm recom-
mendations. First, if you need both memory
and a disk drive, buy the Pal Jr. It is the
fastest disk drive overall. Its controller is
"essentially the same" as the one in the
A2000, according to a Commodore engi-
neer, It uses Commodore's proprietary
DMA chips and is the only DMA drive in
our list. It includes 1MB of memory and an
empty Zorro expansion slot. At S1.495 it is
one of the two most expensive units, but if
you consider the additional 1MB of mem-
ory and the expansion slot, it is priced com-
parably to the other drives plus a memory
expansion card. Its only real drawback is
that it does not offer any bus pass-through,
so you must use the Zorro slot in it for any
further expansion.
If you already have memory expansion,
or if you simply don't have SI, 500, we rec-
ommend the C Ltd. Hard Disk. It combines
good performance with a relatively low
price.
You really can't go wrong, though, with
any of these drives. With the extra memory
cards we looked at last time, and the hard-
disk drives we have here, the Amiga now
can meet an even greater variety of de-
manding computing needs. ■
30 July/August 1987
Now Look At Word Processing
In A Whole New Light.
'^m^fftMf^h
iiii
i i ii i
t i i \ \ \ \ \ \
I !
i i \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ V \" A
i " \ i i ' v \ i \ " \ Y \ ■ >
\ \ \ \ \ \ \
\
ProWrite: All Others Pale By Comparison.
You chose Amiga* because you wanted some-
thing more. Now you choose your software for
the same reason. Which makes choosing Pro-
Write word processing a very bright idea.
The Full Spectrum of Capabilities.
ProWrite lets you select more than just a
typeface: You get proportionally spaced charac-
ter fonts. Brilliant color. Unsurpassed graphics
capabilities. And no surprises. Because what
■ /'T peopin p
you see on die screen with ProWrite is a letter-
perfect picture of what you'll see printed on the
page — from header to footer, right down to
the last pixel.
Creative Control: A Bril-
liant Stroke. With six pull-
down menus, just a click of the
mouse or a few keystrokes is all
you need to create, delete, copy,
alter, move and otherwise ma-
nipulate text. Multiple selections create a limitless
choice of character fonts, colors, sizes and shies.
Customize everything from a daily diary to an
annual report, including color graphics. And
with headers and footers always clearly displayed,
ProWrite makes even advanced formatting as
easy as dragging a mouse.
Ease of Use: Another Bright Idea.
ProWrite delivers more of what you bought Amiga
for: Professional output. Multi-tasking power.
A "creative edge."
You can open up
to eight windows
at once — and
perform a variety
of editing tasks be-
tween them. With
ProWrite, you'll al-
ways know exactly what you're
doing, because you see it
done — in living color — right
before your eyes.
See for yourself what you get with ProWrite.
Then, just for fun, take a look at the others —
and watch them pale by comparison.
New Horizons
SOFTWARE
First In Personal Productivity And Creativity.
New Horizons Software, Inc. PO Box 13167, Austin, TX 78745 (512) 329-6215
ProWrite is a trademark of New Horizons Software, Inc. Amiga is a registered trademark of Commodore-Amiga. Inc.
Circle 38 on Reader Service card
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32 July/August 1987
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H 111 Hi
Professional Text Engine is THE power text tool for profes-
sional/technical writers, programmers, or anyone who needs the ver-
satility of a programmable text editor. Use PTE to create and edit code
for any programming language. Design a custom word processor with
PTE that fits precisely your needs. Combine PTE with other tools like
databases or spreadsheets for truly enhanced preformance.
Professional Text Engine is the only programmable text editor for the Amiga. Sim-
ple but powerful macro programming include operators such as "if...else...endif"
and "do. ..loop". Even subroutines (yes subroutines) can be created to handle con-
ditional tests.
Every aspect of the operating enviroment is under your direct control. Any key on
the keyboard may be defined as a single or multi-keystroke command-even the
mouse buttons are user defineable! PTE even lets you create your own pull down
menus!
Lets face it. Today's crop of word processors were not intended for the creative writer.
Until now, the writer has had no choice but to adapt to the rigid structure and ar-
cane commands of the software. The result was PTE. Developing a "transparent"
text editing enviroment that enhanced the creative process was the primary goal
of Zirkonics. All aspects of the user interface may be adapted to the users preference.
For example, Search and replace strings are custom designed by you. Simply mark
the area that needs changing: word, line, paragraph or document, then perform the
operation, or even multiple operations! Its that simple!
Use macros to combine editing functions or even to combine other macros!
Define sets of macros (glossaries) for different applications. Words or even entire
sentences can be defined as macro commands for instant recall! Glossaries can be
saved independently - The number of glossaries is limited only by disk space!
Writing Code Just dot Ea»y!
Writing and editing code for the Amiga was an arduous task... Before Professional
Text Engine! Create macros for frequently used commands. Take advantage of in-
tellegent macro operators to check syntax, etc.
Configurations!
PTE comes ready to edit. Programming in source code or C? Let PTE's tJuilt in
assembler and C editor take care of programming conventions and syntax. Not pro-
gramming in assembler or C? Create your own editor! PTE's powerful features let
you design your own configuration for any language!
Hun Time I
Because PTE lets you access CLI, You can actually write code, compile it, and then
return to the Editor!
Power Without the Price!
Anyone would think that software this powerful and this versatile would come with
s^ a stiff price tag. PTE comes with complete documentation for only S99.95! Available
at selected dealers or directly from Zirkonics.
Professional Text Engine is the latest development In system tools from Zirkonics
Corp., of Montreal, Canada. f: 1986, 1987.
Zirkonics, Corp. All Rights reserved. s*
To place your order call collect or send $99.95 U.S. plus $3.00 snipping to-y^
ZIR
Dealer Inquiries Invited.
, 422 Guy St., Montreal, Canada H3J 1S6 • (514) 933-7711
Cade 7 on Reader Service card
A Musical Environment:
The SoundScape PRO MIDI Studio
SoundScape's multitasking power and open-ended freedom
can turn your Amiga into a complete, personal music — production studio.
A
By Ben and Jean Means
ttention all you shower singers and musical pros — and
everyone in between. You can now play the music that
is in your head. After all the hoopla about the Amiga's
sound chip settled to earth, there was still the unenvia-
ble job of creating software and hardware to take full
advantage of it. The folks at Mimetics took on this Her-
culean task and came up with (fanfare please) the
SoundScape PRO MIDI Studio.
Power Features for Power Users
Currently a sequencer, a sampler and a MIDI interface,
SoundScape turns the Amiga into your own pro-quality
personal music production studio, for under S300. Each
facet can be used individually or in combination with the
others. The Pro MIDI Studio 1.4 ($149) functions like a
home recording studio, with an unlimited-track profes-
sional sequencer and a 16-channe! MIDI mixer. The
Sound Sampler ($99) turns the Amiga into a four-voice
audio digitizer, which can sample and play back any
sound. And the MIDI Interface ($49) allows the Amiga to
send and receive note, clock and performance-control
information to other MIDI synthesizers, samplers and
drum machines, via your Amiga serial port.
When the three devices are hooked together, the
Amiga becomes the heart of a system that can control
an entire MIDI recording studio. Jim Saad of Sound
Logic Studios in Los Angeles uses SoundScape with his
1.5 MB Amiga to control all the synthesizers and drum
machines in his 16-track studio. He says, "It's the only
sequencer I use in my studio, and in addition the
Amiga balances die books."
But that's only the beginning. SoundScape can be
multitasked with Electronic Arts' DeluxeMusic Con-
struction Set for printing out a finished musical score.
Also, you can write your music in traditional notation
in DeluxeMusic Construction Set and do a full orches-
tral or rock group arrangement in SoundScape via
MIDI editing. However, running SoundScape and
DeluxeMusic Construction Set concurrently requires at
least one megabyte of RAM.
As powerful as SoundScape is in the recording stu-
dio, it plans to revolutionize video production as well.
Mimetics is developing a SMPTE synchronizer that will
let SoundScape control sync to audio and video tape
decks. This, combined with an animation program and
a genlock, will let you not only record your next big hit
album in your bedroom, but produce the videos for it
as well.
Techno-shock at NAMM
Mimetics raised eyebrows at the Winter National Asso-
ciation of Music Merchants (NAMM) Show with
SoundScape demonstrations of music and video multi-
tasking. In the first demo, SoundScape simultaneously
ran a Slide Show of Hold-and-Modify images and a
song composed on SoundScape and played back with ».
ILLUSTRATED BY ROB COLVTN
AmigaWortd 35
SoundScape windows
containing the patch
panel, tapedeck and
console keyboard.
sounds from the SoundScape sampler. Another demo
showed the Amiga controlling and sequencing a bank
of MIDI instruments while it also ran the stage lights.
In the third demo, the Amiga synced a soundtrack to
video via the soon-to-be-released SMPTE synchronizer.
Music industry professionals went into teehno-shock
when they learned thai the Amiga was running the
whole show. And with extra RAM, the Amiga can run
all three demonstrations at the same time!
But what does this mean to the average Amiga user
who just wants to play a little music? With SoundScape
and a 512K. Amiga, you can sample some sounds, write
some songs and have a lot of fun. When you decide to
get serious, adding two megabytes of memory will bring
your system up to professional quality.
Perhaps some of you are like me — you rushed out to
buy the 1.1 or 1.2 version of SoundScape, only to be
disappointed and frustrated by frequent crashes. Well,
be of good cheer! The latest edition is very stable.
(Mimetics is distributing the 1.4 revision free to all reg-
istered SoundScape owners.)
SoundScape is a very complex program with a variety
of parts; be prepared to spend at least a week learning
this program. Don't expect clear, unambiguous help
from the manual, cither; it's one of the least appealing
parts of the package. Fortunately, a new manual with a
set of tutorial "recipe cards" is being prepared, and
Mimetics is putting out a newsletter, "Mimentos," with
tutorials and a queslion-and-answer section.
The Brains That Drive the Brawn
Pro MIDI Studio 1.4 is the cornerstone of the Sound-
Scape system. It creates a complete musical operating
environment that lets you control a music system the
way AmigaDOS lets you control your computer system.
SoundScape is not a single program, it consists of many
modules that combine to create the musical environ-
ment. Pro MIDI Studio 1.4 is the invisible soul of the
system, the place where your customized musical system
becomes a reality.
The visible heart of Pro MIDI 1.4 is the Patch Panel.
Here, you connect the modules of your music system to
suit your own needs. Currently, the available Patch
Panel inputs are the MIDI Mixer, the QWERTY key-
board, the MIDI In and a MIDI Clock In. The available
outputs are the Sampler, the MIDI Mixer, the Player
Piano, the Tape Deck, the MIDI Out. and the MIDI
Clock Out. Patches can be saved and recalled from disk,
so you can tailor the Patch Panel settings for every
song. You never again need to experience that terrible
feeling of being locked into a matrix that doesn't suit
your particular needs.
As Mimetics or others introduce new modules,
including modules to integrate music and video, you'll
be able to install them in the Patch Panel yourself. This
is the greatest innovation of the SoundScape system,
and the most important difference between Sound-
Scape and most other computer music systems. Sound-
Scape is an open-ended system, with the Patch Panel
providing a simple and elegant way to integrate new
modules into your system.
SoundScape's modular approach is similar to that
used in New England Digital's Synclavicr. In the late
'70s, the Synclavier was just another digital synthesizer
and sequencer, but the addition of modules has turned
the Synclavier into a complete tapeless recording stu-
dio. Due to its modular design and the Amiga's multi-
tasking capabilities, SoundScape could become the
Synclavier of the '90s. Pro MIDI Studio 1.1 is merely
the beginning.
Breaking the Track Limit
The Tape Deck gives you not eight tracks, not 16 tracks
or even 24 tracks, but an unlimited number of tracks to
record on. Your only limitation is the amount of avail-
able RAM, which can be increased according to your
budget. With 512K, you can store about 7,000 notes on
these tracks when not using samples. With two mega-
bytes, you can use up to a whopping 32 seconds of sam-
ples while playing an entire concert or symphony
completely from RAM memory with no disk-loading.
Inputs to the Tape Deck commonly come from the
QWERTY keyboard or from your synthesizers and
drum machines. The QWERTY keyboard can produce a
128-note range, compared to a grand piano's range of
88 notes.
You have the option of inputting your notes in real
time or in step time. Real time is used when you simply
want to record the piece as performed; step time is
used when you want to enter the notes individually
with precise time values. Using step time, you can cre-
ate notes that will last as long as the duration of the
song or as short as a 384th note (using 90 clocks per
quarter note resolution).
Besides the standard controls (Stop, Play, Rewind,
Fast Forward, Record and a tape counter), the Tape
Deck sports professional features like the Play from
Beginning button, which instantly rewinds the Tape
Deck and starts it playing. The Punch In and Punch
36 July/August 1987
Out controls allow you to precisely record over one
part of a track while leaving the rest unchanged; this is
very handy when you want to correct a few wrong
notes. Also, the two Autolocate buttons will take yon
instantly to any place in your piece.
The track architecture is very flexible, with play, re-
cord, echo, match, transpose and trigger modes. Each
track has its own set of MIDI In and Out filters and a
name of up to 12 characters. You can record a track on
any one MIDI channel, which can be changed on play-
back, You can transpose tracks lo another key by up to
1 1 semitones and set them to any octave, either during
recording or on playback. You can delay a track to start
playing at any desired part of the song, mute it entirely
or instantly duplicate it.
Recording has come a long way since (he Beatles rec-
orded Srrgeant Fbpprr's on a pair of four-track tape
decks. The industry standard is now 24 tracks, with sev-
eral 32-track machines on the market. But SoundScape
has broken the track limit and electronically done away
with tape. The only time you'll need tape is for final
mixdown or to add acoustic instruments.
Dipping into the MIDI Note Stream
Once tracks are recorded, they can be modified in the
Edit Sequence Window. Here, the notes from your
track .in- displayed, showing the name ol the notes,
when they begin and bow long they last. Each note can
be fully edited. The time the notes begin can be dis-
played in MIDI clock numbers or in beats and meas-
ures. In the beats and measures mode, you can use any
simple or complex time signature, and if you're wild
about polyrhythms, each track can have a different time
signature.
If your timing was a little sloppy when you per-
formed the track, you can time-correct ii with the
Quantize feature, defined in any number of MIDI
clocks you wish. Quantizing is of the "note on" variety;
in other words, only the time a note begins is corrected
while the length of the note remains the same. This is
fine as far as it goes, but Mimetics still needs to add a
few features. One nice feature of the Quantize module
is that sequences can be edited to create an endless
loop. This is convenient for figuring out lead and mel-
ody ideas over a repeated rhythm or bass accompani-
ment. SoundScape's Program Designer Todor Fay is
currently developing a complete Quantizing module
with global Quantize.
Tech Heads Corner
All right, here are all those specs you've been waiting
for. (Sane human beings without a coffee cup grafted to
one hand and a calculator grafted to the other can skip
this section.) SoundScapes's c.-fault clock rate is 24
clocks per quarter note (cpqn), but it can also run at 48
and fill cpqn. At 24 cpqn, you get a clock range of five
to 600 beats per minute (bpm), at 48 cpqn, a clock
range of 2.5 to 300 bpm; and at 96 cpqn, a clock range
of 1.25 to 150 bpm. At 96 cpqn, the smallest increment
is a 384th note. Still not satisfied with the res? Mimetics
is considering offering direct access to l be note stream
just like the Amiga sees it — in microscopic sections.
And by the way, tempo changes are programmable via
a control track.
Running into the Wall of Sound
Once you've recorded all those great tracks and edited
them to perfection, you can assemble them into songs
in the Edit Song Window.
Most sequencers only allow you to string songs
together in straight block formal, like a single row of
bricks. SoundScape however, lets you overlap sound
blocks of any length and any time signature. Instead of
a row of bricks, you can build a solid wall of sound.
This unusual approach allows the composer to explore
new techniques of composition that were impossible
with previous sequencers.
The currenl Edit Song Window is clumsy, however, in
the way it names the tracks you import to it and
because it can only edit one track at a time. Mimetics
promises separate modules tailored to different editing
applications. In fact, a new Edit Song Window should
be available by the lime you read this.
Special Effects
The powerful Special Effects Track Modes allow you to
play back your tracks in several ingenious ways. Echo
Mode starts a copy of a sequence each time you press a
key. The program checks the distance from middle C of
that key, and starts a new track transposed the calcu-
lated distance from middle C each time a new key is
pressed. This can create huge tcxtural washes a la Phil-
lip Glass. . .or tola! chaos. When used tastefully, the
results of Echo Mode are fabulously hypnotic.
Transpose Mode checks the distance from middle C
just like Echo Mode, but instead of starting a new
sequence, it transposes the key of any tracks you select.
Trigger Mode starts a sequence playing each time its
first note is played, which is great for placing short
accent lines within a piece.
Finally, Match Mode, used with the Player Piano Mod-
ule, gives you a visual performance feedback system to
help you learn music more easily. Notes from the tape
deck are shown on the Player Piano for the first note
or notes of a piece you want to learn. When you press
the right key or keys. Match Mode proceeds to the next
note and so leads you through the whole piece. Also, if
you want to see your teacher's notes while you are play-
ing, you can set the Player Piano to two different chan-
nels of display. The Piano will show the notes you play
in red and your teacher's notes in gray.
SoundScape Passes the Audition
SoundScape is the first attempt at a comprehensive Pro
MIDI Sequencer for the Amiga, and it is satisfyingly
complete. The program is very solid and logical in its
conception; the modular approach sets the Pro MIDI
Studio apart from other sequencers.
With the rapidly-expanding demands of musicians,
many sequencers quickly become obsolete. Product life
cycles have been shrinking since the introduction of
MIDI in 1<I83. While many other sequencers will ►•
The only time you'll
need tape is
for final mixdown or
to add acoustic
instruments.
AmigaWorld 37
SoundScape's sample
capture and edit
window.
become outmoded, Pro MIDI Studio will be able to
keep up with user's demands by simply adding new
modules.
The other powerful component in this musical equa-
tion is the Amiga's multitasking ability. In the past,
sophisticated uses of MIDI music processing and graph-
ics required several computers or sequencers. Interfac-
ing these devices has been an ongoing headache with
enormous costs. Pro MIDI Studio unleashes the power
of the Amiga to run all of your music and graphics
from one computer at the same time.
The Sound Sampler:
All the Noise That Fits
The Sound Sampler turns the Amiga into a four-voice,
eight-bit companding (compression/expanding) sampler.
Most other samplers are fun musical toys, but the
Mimetics Sound Sampler is a useful musical tool, which
costs just S99. To put this in perspective, just five or six
years ago top music professionals were gladly paying
$30,000 for the original Fairlight Computer Music
Instrument (an eight-bit system). Now the Fairlight has
gone to 16-bit to keep up with the Compact Disc 16-bil
standard, and the base price has skyrocketed into the
$65,000 realm. But as an introduction to sampling (and
as a way to keep 564,000+ in your pocket), eight-bit
still has something to offer, as Mimetics' Sound Sam-
pler proves.
Since eight-bit sampling only offers 256 level values
with 1% distortion (compared to 16-bit sampling, which
has 65,000 levels with .007% distortion), the sound
quality is more like your Walkman than your CD
player. However, with careful sampling and editing you
can fool your ear into thinking the quality is closer to a
12- or 14-bit system. The Amiga only has about a 4K
frequency range, so high instruments like cymbals don't
play back well. But mid- and low- frequency instruments
can sound great.
In case you buy Pro MIDI Studio 1.4 without the
Sound Sampler, you can buy some ready-made samples
to install and edit in your system. But the real fun is
when you courageously take your microphone or line
level (not included) to the mat and make it squeal; For-
get music for a second — I'm talking sounds! Let's be
honest — I'm talking Noise! What you can do with com-
mon household noises and the Mimetics Sound Sam-
pler is hilarious. Your dog, your kids, your pots and
pans. Dishwashers, lawn mowers, phone calls, bouncing
balls, kitty cats, baseball bats. . . let your imagination
and your ears go wild! Turn all these into instruments;
then, play them along with your songs. In my latest
effort a chorus of breaking bottles, ringing crystal
glasses, thumping cardboard tubes and a motorcycle
accompanies the guitars, bass and synlhs.
The hardware part of the sampler is a black box
about the size of a bar of soap that plugs into the sec-
ond mouse port. It accepts mono or stereo RCA line-
level inputs or a mono mini-phone plug microphone-
level input. The current software only supports mono
playback.
The Sound Sampler can hold up to 160 different
samples in RAM memory all at the same time! To take
full advantage of all those samples, you'll need extra
RAM. The Amiga only uses Internal Chip memorv for
samples. That's about 460K after the initial boot when
using external RAM; so at the fast sample rate of 14 K,
you can have about 32 seconds of sampling time. At the
slow sample rate of 7K, you have a little over a minute
of sampling. On a 512K Amiga, you will have about 12
seconds of sampling at the fast sample rate of 14K and
24 seconds at 7K. This decreases to about four seconds
of sampling time when you use the Pro MIDI Studio
along with the Sampler, but you can do a lot with those
four seconds!
Sampling occurs in the Sample Capture and Edit
Window. There, samples can be translated by octave,
recorded compressed or non-compressed, displayed
with an oscillograph and have their start and loop
points edited. Besides modifying an existing waveform,
you can draw your own from scratch. Each sample can
then be tuned, transposed, changed to another octave,
adjusted for key velocity, set for pitch bend and enve-
loped by a three-level, four-rate ADSR that has its own
visual display.
The oscillograph display can be adjusted to show the
entire sample or just a few cycles of it. This lets you
figure out where to place the loop points. These loop
points set the part of the sample to be repeated so that
a sample of any length can be sustained indefinitely.
Each sample plays back over an 11 note range; so to
make a complete instrument, you can either translate
the sample into other octaves or resample the sound
source playing an octave higher or lower. Some sounds
become very bizarre when translated. Spoken words
translated up an octave give the Alvin and the Chip-
munks effect, while translated down an octave they end
up sounding like King Kong muttering in his sleep.
Don't be disappointed if your first attempts at sam-
pling don't sound just like the grand piano you were ►
3 S July/August 1987
Compatible with mast printers. FUPSIDE! allows your printer to print any lext tile or IFF graphic
-' picture extremely wide, all at once, on one long continuous page. You can now make spreadsheet columns as
wide as you want, create quality printouts for your college reports, office needs or home use without glue
tape or staples. FUPSIDE! aids in the width and length design of just about any printout, from most IFF
J graphic or text file programs. FUPSIDE!, requiring 512k is easy to learn and interfaces with
; Micro-Systems Software's other great Commodore Amiga programs such as Scribble!, Analyze!
and Organize! FUPSIDE! will also perform its print magic on just about any other word processor,
J spreadsheet, information manager or IFF graphic program. Ask for a dealer demonstration of these
fine products, or call Micro-Systems Software. Inc. for more iflf carnation.
iK
Analyze!, a powerful. electronic^
spreadsheet, wilh extensive mathematical
functions, a full featured macro language; graphs
■ and sort, allows^you to enter : matherrfa!ic8l data,
from your company's general ledger -and bank
reconciliations to your personal budget and,
check registers. When using Analyze' with
FLIPSIDE-T, you can print extremely wide
and impressive spreadsheets.
MICRO-SYSTEMS SOFTWARE, INC....7 years of quality software and still growing strong!
MICROSYSTEMS SOFTWARE INC.
12798 V\fesi Forest Hill Blvd., Ste. 202, West Palm Beach, FL 33414
Amirja is a trademark Dl Commodore Amiga Inc
Analyze' .md flipsiDE' ate trademarks oi Mrcro-sysipms Software Ine
Circle 129 on Reader Service card
See your local dealer
or call
1-800-327-8724
in Florida
305-790-0772
trying to capture. Making high quality samples with
seamless loops is an art even on high-end systems.
The MIDI Interface
The MIDI Interface is the simplest part of the system. It
connects to the Amiga serial port via a short cable and
provides MIDI In, Out and Thru connections, allowing
the Amiga to talk to the world of MIDI synthesizers,
samplers, sequencers and drum machines. From now
through September 15, 1987, Mimetics will give you a
free MIDI Interface when you show proof of purchase
of a Pro MIDI Studio 1.4, Sound Sampler and
DeluxeMusic Construction Set.
Now and For the Future
By the time you read this, the first SoundScape Utility
Disk containing six new modules to install in the Patch
Panel should be available for $49.95. The Mousebender
will give mouse control over pitch bend, vibrato, tempo
and other MIDI functions. The Mapper/Splitter will
change any MIDI input into any MIDI output and send
it out on any MIDI channel, taking the "If only I
could ..." out of your system forever. Systemx will save
and recall synthesizer patch banks from synths that
don't require handshaking or requests. The Frame
Counter is a film-scoring tool that converts track infor-
mation into a "hit list" shown in seconds and frames.
The Fuel Gauge maps available memory. The Clock
Divider changes MIDI clock ratios and is useful for
sending clock information to drum machines when in
hi-res clock modes. Mimetics promises to introduce
many more module disks.
SoundScape is also offering a Developer's Kit ($150).
If you are a reasonably proficient Clanguage program-
mer, you can program your own custom modules to
plug into SoundScape. And a simplified Developer's Kit
is on the drawing board that will allow amateur pro-
grammers to create simple modules.
Desktop Recording
A whole new age of media communications is coming.
Il started with the birth of desktop publishing, flu- new
age of music will witness the birth of desktop recording
and video production. And SoundScape is one of its
most important heralds, creating better music more
cheaply than ever before. ■
Ben Means is a recording engineer, producer and songwriter
and has his man 12-track recording studio. Jean Means writes
and has her own public relations and promotion firm. Write to
them do AmigaWorld, 80 Elm St., Peterborough, NH 03458.
SoundScape PRO MIDI Studio ($149)
Sound Sampler ($99)
MIDI Interface ($49)
Mimetics Corporation
PO Box 60238, Station A
Palo Alto, CA 94300
408/741-0117
512K required.
*SPECIAL*
Amiga Computer, Monitor.
256K Expansion Module
and 3.5 Exlernal Drive
$1,369 00
$999
00
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AEGIS
Aegis Animator/
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Aegis Images * 54.00
Aegis Impact 3129,00
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Sonix 3 56.00
COMMODORE AMIGA SOFTWARE
Amiga Assembler 3 76. 25
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Azlec C Compiler 3119.95
Textcralt 3 79.95
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SPECIALS OF THE MONTH
JUKI 5510
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HARD DISK
9720 H
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ACCESSORIES
Modems
Cables
Hard Drives
Monitors
Memory
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Deluxe Paint An call
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VIP Professional 3134.00
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AMIGA it a trademark of Commodore- Amiga Inc.
Price* subject to change
-:.■■«-:■-
P. 0. Box 685
Nitro. WV 25143
Circle 1 16 on Reader Service card.
Any car enthusiast can tell you that a performance auto is made up of many parts. Each individual piece must be high-performance for the complete car to
be high-performance. For example, a car that can do well in excess of 1 50mph would be very limited by tires that were only rated for 80mph. The same is
true with your Amiga IM Computer. The Amiga is a very high-performance computer, but can be severely limited by the speed of its floppy disk drives.
Much of the time, your computer sits there idling while loading data Irom the disk. This also makes you idle and greatly decreases your productivity.
Now you can turbo-charge your Amiga with a SupraDrive HardDisk and bring it up to its true performance. SupraDrive will speed up disk transfers by up to
800% and also eliminate the tedious task of constantly swapping diskettes in and out of your floppy drive. The performance of your Amiga will be enhanc-
ed in many ways; directories, icons, and graphics will appear much faster, programs will load quicker, and the general user interface will seem much
better.
A SupraDrive, much like a European sports car, includes many subtle features that greatly enhance its value. The built-in real-time clock will remember
the current time and date, even when you turn your computer off - eliminating the need to set the system's clock every time you use your computer.
Expanding your RAM memory is much cheaper and easier with the 51 2K to 4MB SupraRam modules that can be quickly installed in the SupraDrive inter-
face. Other expansion is also easy with the Amiga Buss pass-through on the SupraDrive and the built-in SCSI port (for adding another hard disk or tape
back-up).
■ 2D, 30, and BOMB Hard Disks A r\
■ Real-time Clock with Battery Back-up , 90^
■ SCSI Expansion Port and Amiga Buss pass-through x\\0^"
■ 512K to 4MB RAM expansion capability
■ Only S995.00 for 20MB version
Increase the performance of your Amiga. Add a SupraDrive.
»^ e
f«''
TS^*" h
"Amiga is a trademark ol Commodore- Amiga.. Inc.
Supra Corporation
1 133 Commercial Way I Albany, OR 97321 USA
Phone: (503) 967-9075 / Telex: 5106005236 (Supra Corp.)
Circle 208 on Reader Service card.
™Supf aDnve i s a Trademark qt Supra Cot o.
Circle 159 on Reader Service card.
VIZ^WRITE
PERSONAL WORD PROCESSOR
Announcing the first desktop publishing word
processor for the exciting Commodore Amiga.
VizaWrite Amiga is a brand new development
of a product that has been a best seller for
many years. Developed entirely in machine
code, Vizawrite has the speed, compactness and
style' that makes the most of the Amiga.
■ VizaWrite brings desktop publishing to the
AMIGA!! combine pictures from your favorite
"Paint" program into a document, reduce or
enlarge pictures at any time and then print it!!
For high quality presentation of both text and
graphics.
■ vizawrite supports all AMIGA proportional
and fixed-width fonts. True proportional
layout gives instant pixel accuracy to margins,
tabulations and justification. Switch fonts at
any time - underline, italic, bold, and
superscript/subscript all show on-screen as
they will print.
■ vizawrite is extremely easy to use. we've
made sure that our software is presented in a
logical and natural way. Using pull-down menus,
requestor boxes, and mouse selection of
activities combine to make document
preparation more effective and enjoyable.
■ VizaWrite is well behaved, allowing you to use
the multi-tasking capabilities and run several
programs simultaneously.
■ Vizawrite is broad minded, allowing you to
include text from Textcraft, pictures from
Graphicraft, Deluxe Paint *- and most other
products.
■ VizaWrite comes ready to run, no installation
of the software is required and will run in 256K
of RAM on one or more drives- comes supplied
with Workbench 1.2 and requires Kickstart 1.2
or greater.
■ Because Vizawrite is well behaved, it supports
all peripherals, such as hard disk subsystems, as
long as they are also well-behaved.
■ Automatically sets text into pages while
editing. Text is always shown as "What you see
is what you get."
■ Headers and footers show at the top and
bottom of each page; they can be one or more
lines and have their own font sty le and margins
■ Ruler lines control page layout. Margins,
tabulations, justification and line spacing are all
adjustable using the icons on the ruler line.
Rulers can be introduced anywhere in the
document. Rulers can be hidden from view, if
required.
■ Move between pages instantly: no waiting for
disk accessing • select any page to work on.
■ Copy, cut and paste by highlighting text with
the mouse.
■ Move around the text by pointing with the
mouse or by using the cursor keys, scroll
through the document, forwards or
backwards.
■ Edit and save any standard ASCII file. All
character codes above the space character can
be used in a document. Supports all
international characters.
■ VizaWrite documents retain pertinent
information when saved - such as author,
creation date, notes, alteration count etc.
■ open as many documents onto the screen as
will fit into memory. Vizawrite uses memory
extremely efficiently, and works with the
AMIGA operating system in the standard way.
■ Mail merge from a standard ASCII file with
configurable item delimiters. Alternatively,
mail merge from a vizawrite document, where
each name and address is held in its own page.
■ Optional configuration file permits the
varying of many operation defaults, such as
standard document size, screen colors, margins,
tab stops, etc.
b Document history window, used to log
author's name, creation date, amended date,
etc. Shows document statistics, such as word
and sentence counts.
■ Glossary system permits single-keystrokes
recall of frequently used phrases. This is
inserted directly Into the document at the
current typing position, instantly.
■ Supports fixed-width font printing on any
preferences-selected printer. Supports
proportional printing on certain printer types
only (this is a limitation of the printers).
Recommended dot-matrix printer is NEC
PINWRITER P6/P7, recommended datsywheel is
JUKI 6100 or any DIABLO compatible. HP LaserJet
is the recommended laser printer using the "F"
font cartridge. The AMIGA proportional screen
fonts are printed in high resolution on
supported dot-matrix printers. Daisywheel
users can use proportional print-wheels to print
out documents laid out using the proportional
screen fonts.
Vizawrite AMIGA now forms the nucleus of a
complete desktop publishing system that Viza
is developing for the commodore AMIGA,
intuitive, simple, fast and powerful software -
just what your AMIGA deserves.
Full formatting and layout control of pages
up to 18" wide.
Enhanced printer support, in many cases
better output than Preference printer drivers.
Can also print from Perference printer drives.
ONLY!
$ 149
95
U.S. Suggested Retail
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SOFTWARE
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Distributed by
Progressive Peripherals & software, inc.
PROGR€XHV€
P€RIPH€RAL/
6/OfTUIAR€
*U KALAMATH STREET
DENVER. COLORADO B0204
303-825-41 44
TELEX 8B88J7
B.
B.
K
N
KING OF THE BLUES
B
B. King doesn't have an Amiga; he has two of them. "I got the first one
about a year ago," he told me from a New York hotel earlier this year,
where he was preparing for a performance, "But I got so lonesome for
it when I was on the road that I had to go out and buy another one." That's pretty
high-tech for a man who had to borrow $15 from his boss on the farm to buy his
first guitar.
Popular music wouldn't be the same if he hadn't bought that first guitar. King
picked cotton on the Mississippi Delta before hitch-hiking to Memphis, a regional
music center in 1944, at the age of 19. There he became "The Beale Street Blues
Boy" which was soon shortened to "B.B." as he accompanied himself with that
guitar on streetcomers for spare change, which is how many blues performers of
the period built reputations. Like all perfectionists and true originals, however,
King was different. Over the ensuing years, he extended and heightened a popular
musical form, the 12-bar blues, incorporating the freedom of jazz with the soul of
gospel, synthesizing a style that is uniquely his own— a style that has been imitated
and acknowledged by his contemporaries.
Caledonia and Commodore
B. B. King owns several computers (a Commodore 64, Compac and Tandy Color Computer) but the Amiga was the first to hold his interest
musically. He has Music Studio, SoundScape ProMIDI Studio and was playing with DeluxeMusic Construction Set when I talked with him.
"I use it primarily for learning songs," he said. He enters melodies from sheet music and then plays along in real-time with Lucille, his
famous electric guitar. He likes to mouse-in harmonies, too, and do his own arrangements, but he finds four sound channels restrictive.
"It's real useful and lots of fun. When I want to use a more complex chord, say a 9th or 13th, sometimes I leave out the fundamental tone."
(That's because our ears and brains, wonderful mechanisms that they are, will often supply the fundamental pitch when the rest of the
chord is present.) "But I'm thinking about getting one of those things that gives you more voices," he said. I wondered if he knew of a way
to produce more internal voices, but it turned out he was referring to a MIDI interface and a synthesizer.
He told me about a composer/arranger friend who puts his music on disk in his apartment and then takes the disk to a recording studio,
but he didn't seem intimately familiar with MIDI. When he mentioned that he wasn't comfortable using a piano-type keyboard, I told him
about the new MIDI guitar pick-ups that replace keyboards for input, and he seemed very interested.
The Thrill is Back
King calls himself a blues singer, but he's much more than that— more like a legend. He has been the undisputed King of The Blues since
his masterpiece, "The Thrill Is Gone," sold over a million copies in 1967.
Whatever you call him, B.B. King is the consumate performer, having played to over 17,000 audiences, once doing 360 concerts in a single
year. He used a "crybaby" guitar foot pedal in "Lucille Talk Back," but says that's the only electronic instrument he has played professionally.
(His keyboard player uses a Yamaha DX7.) Considering the heights to which he has taken Lucille and his voice (not to mention his back-
up orchestra) both literally and figuratively, it will be interesting to see what he does with the Amiga professionally.
King is a self-taught musician, yet he has spent a lifetime performing all over the world, garnering just about every musical award there
is. His interest in music began when a preacher back in Mississippi taught him three chords: I, IV and V. "And you know what?" he asked
me rhetorically there in New York, "I'm still playin' em."
"On the Amiga?" I asked.
"On the Amiga," he said with a grin.D
—Peggy Herrlngton
AmigaWorld 43
DeluxeMusic
Construction Set:
Scoring High On a Scale of A to G
If you want standard music notation to be your forte,
or if it already is, you'll score with DeluxeMusic.
D
By Peggy Herrington
eluxeMusic Construction Set from Electronic Arts is the
most accurate and flexible note editor I've used on any
microcomputer, or for that matter, any computer.
But it's not perfect. The first release of DeluxeMusic
(late '86) has some problems: The worst appears when
you try to save a score to a disk with insufficient free
space (a condition you cannot ascertain from within the
program). The program empties the original file, if
there was one, and makes il impossible to save the new
file — you can plav and edit, but Save and Save As won't
work. Although you probably wouldn't think so, the
score can be saved as a SMUS file. Also, entering music
in step-time from a MIDI-connected synthesizer sum-
mons a "performance" by a Guru more often
than not.
If you bought an early release, these and other less
fatal flaws are fixed in an upgraded program disk and
addenda you can request from Electronic Arts.
The Programme
DeluxeMusic is nothing if not elaborate. It provides up
lo eight staves, each holding two rhythmically separate
parts differentiated by note stems going up or down.
You can play music with eight Amiga and MIDI instru-
ments using four Amiga samples (memory permitting)
and four MIDI; more if you double-up on channels or
exclude the Amiga. Each staff carries its own instru-
ment and is playable and printable alone or in combi-
nation with any of the others.
Computers are notorious for making mechanical, reg-
imented music, but not with DeluxeMusic. It imple-
ments treble, tenor, alto or bass clef on any staff, uses
ties for extended durations, accommodates triplets and
fives of whole to 32nd notes and rests. Amplitude
changes from ppp lo fff can take effect gradually or be
assigned abruptly to each note. Tempo, time and key
signatures affect all staves, but, like clefs and instrumen-
tation, can be changed at the beginning of any
measure.
As a dedicated note editor, DeluxeMusic offers more
editing features thai] Music Studio and Sonix combined
and lets you do something neither of them will: You
can edit the actual notes while the music plays, rather
than only the score's transposition, tuning and tempo.
It prints scores, too. Notation is accurately reflected
both onscreen and on paper. You can place titles, cred-^
ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM LOW
AmigaWorld 45
DeluxeMusie's Score
Editing Screen.
its, lyrics and instructions along with non-playing music
symbols and guitar tablature anywhere in a score, even
on the lines of the staves, without interfering with
playback.
I am very disappointed that DcluxeMusic doesn't ac-
commodate a laser printer, which is a must for profes-
sional scoring. Although the prim-outs arc better than
those from Music Studio or Sonix, they are blocky, jag-
ged things that I wouldn't use professionally. Notation
is in 640 X 200 screen resolution and can be printed
with a graphics-capable printer. (I tried a Seikosha SP-
1200AI and a Xerox 4020.) Space can be adjusted for
tcxt, lyrics and symbols. Two types of non-playing fonts
are available, guitar fret tablature and non-playing mu-
sic symbols; the addenda available from Electronic Arts
explains how to use them. The upgraded program fixes
bugs in the original that leave space where a part you
don't want printed would have been and that create
staff lines of uneven thickness.
Power Windows
While it is similar to the Macintosh version, Amiga
DcluxeMusic uses color, pulldown menus, mouse and
keyboard commands to advantage. Underlying the pro-
gram's flexibility is its construction. Unlike screen de-
vices that inhibit input when open, windows let you do
several things at once such as play and change a score.
Three windows are present at start-up: A score window
that is expandable over the entire screen, a palette of
music symbols and a representation of a six-octave
piano keyboard. These latter windows can be closed,
moved about freely or placed behind the score. Avail-
able through a pull-down menu is the score set-up win-
dow where you establish the tempo (changeable at
measure boundaries), number and spacing of slaves, set
the number of measures and their width for screen or
printer output, and so forth. Time and key signature
windows offer all possible combinations.
Before you use a note editor you must, of course,
write the musical score. This can be done in three ways
with DeluxeMusic, and techniques from one method
can be combined with those you prefer from the others.
When a symbol on the music palette is clicked on, the
pointer becomes the svmbol. You then move it to the
appropriate place on the score and click the mouse but-
ton again to enter it. This isn't as tedious as it sounds
because you return the pointer to the palette only when
you want to change symbols. Clicking the pointer on
the on-screen piano keyboard, enters the corresponding
note alone or in a chord on the staff. Number keys arc
used to change durations (2 is a half note, 4 is a quarter
note, etc.). The final method of entry is pressing a key
on a MIDI-connected synthesizer in step-time. Duration
is altered with the number keys, from the palette, or
you can hold the key down lo lengthen it. Music cannot
be entered from an attached synthesizer by playing in
real-time — that is done with a sequencer, not a note
editor.
Accurate Notation
Once you have entered some music, you can highlight
notes individually or in adjacent groups and alter them
with menu selections or appropriate left-Amiga key
combinations. For example, stems can be flipped
(AmigaF) and notes of the same pitch tied (Amiga-T) in
series across bar lines. Highlighted groups can be
beamed (Amiga-B), transposed up or down by whole,
half-steps or octaves. Durations can be doubled (Amiga-
D) or halved (Amiga-H) and chords inverted. To alter a
pitch, you simply move the note up or down the staff
as it sounds, releasing the mouse button when it is in
place. Accidentals and the ubiquitous musical dot can
be added from the palette.
When it comes to accuracy of notation, DeluxeMusic
is surpassed by none. You can move through a score in
one long string or flip it by pages. Up to 10 measures
can be shown on the screen or a single measure can be
stretched across it for detail work. You aren't confined
to fixed-note spacing, and space above and below each
staff is adjustable. A scroll bar slides the music up and
down on the screen, which is handy for working with
multipart scores. The clipboard is used for editing sec-
tions with cut, copy and paste so that repeated parts
need be entered only once. You can copy and insert
sections of music from one staff to another (it is auto-
matically transposed if you move it to a different clef)
or conserve memory with repeat bars and first and sec-
ond endings. Crescendos and diminunendos are spread
over groups of notes for graduated volume control.
Orchestration
DeluxeMusic comes with 15 good IFF-sampled sounds
called Accordion, AhhVoicc, BuzzSynth, Clarinet, Elec-
Bass, Flute, HollowSynth, JazzGuil, Percussion (five dif-
ferent sounds), PhaseSynth, Piano, PipeOrgan,
StratSynth, Strings and Trumpet. Each can be loaded
into memory and assigned to a staff at the beginning of
any measure. Since samples are big, you'll probably
hanker for expansion memory if you like variety, al-^-
46 July/August 1987
Circle 4 on Reader Service card.
With Shakespeare-"* You can work with Deluxe
Paint™using any set of colors • Print all graphics
in their correct colors • Crop text or graphics
in any shape • Flow text around graphics or
superimpose both.
Shakespeare"" provides you with a flexible,
movable toolbox • Windows that are completely
re-sizable & movable • Customize your own working
environment • Work in 2 modes: real and economy ■
Create a document not limited by RAM or disk space,
one page or 100 pages.
Shakespeare"" supports multiple color sets in the same
document • Offers built-in support for Apple LaserWri
ter™ & other Postscript printers • Works great in the
Amiga's multi-tasking environment.
^ Page 1Tl li
The Master
comes to
page integratlo
Best of all, it's fast! Shakespeare"" always anticipates your next move
All display elements are constantly updated.
Comes on 2 disks with a full set of graphic design templates for instant
& easy-to-use page layouts. Plus a library of digitized Clip Art images.
$225 Not copyprotected!
Shakespeare": The ultimate desktop publishing
tool for the Amiga
I N F I N I T \
^■■i^^HHHIIIIIIIIII I
1144 65 th Street, Suite C
Emeryville, CA 94608
415-420-1551
Ask your dealer about Shakespeare"
Amiga is a registered trademark erf Commodore-Amiga, Inc. Deluxe Paint is a registered trademark of Electronic Arts. laseiWriter is a registered trademark
"f W c Computer, Inc. „ l9g7 Mlnnf ioftmm Lld
Deluxe Tips and Tricks
MULTITASKING WITH DcluxcMusic is possible with
expansion RAM if you boot from another Workbench
disk or put C directory commands on your Deluxe-
Music working disk. (Free space by putting the music
and instruments on other disks.)
Experiment with play styles. Using #5 (fast deep vi-
O* S cr
brato) with a guitar sample sounds a lot like bending a
string and is particularly effective with FuzzGuitar from
It's Only Rock 'N Roll. A slow attack (#15) on a longer
note comes close to a trill, and play styles #12 and #14
dramatically improve piano sounds.
Instruments should be "set" or assigned in the order
in which they are loaded and appear on the pull-down
menu. That's why they all move up on the staves if you
remove one. Since there's no way to insert one in the
menu, sometimes it's easier to remove and reload them
all as you orchestrate.
Keep scores and instruments on separate disks. To
load instruments from a second disk, you must intro-
duce that disk before you load the score by pretending
to load an instrument from it and cancelling at the last
minute. (It is of primary importance to leave a disk in
the drive until the red light goes out. If you eject one
prematurely, chances are you'll be singing the blues
with a hard sector error.) Although undocumented, you
can save sections of music or combine scores by copy-
ing the part you want. (Free memory for this by delet-
ing instruments.) Then you can save, load or clear the
score window and the copied part will still be there
waiting for you to paste it wherever you wish. This lets
you insert bass lines, chord progressions and riffs in
scores without having to re-enter them.
Because timing is strictly enforced, computer pro-
grams can't usually handle things like retards, pick-ups
and grace notes. DeluxeMusic will accommodate them
in a separate measure if you fool around with the time
signatures.
Hundreds of transcriptions and lots of samples from
talented Amiga musicians are available on commercial
networks, electronic bulletin boards and from user
groups. Since it's permissible to use copyrighted music
in the public domain, there's everything from rock to
classical. Some arrangements are done exceedingly well,
especially those by Chuck Hawes and Xanthar.D
though 512K is sufficient for four samples with most
popular songs. Only one sample can be assigned per
staff, but you can copy a part to another staff and as-
sign a different sample for more complex sounds. Just
remember that the Amiga can play only four at once.
Electronic Arts produces It's Only Rock *N Roll
($39.95), a utility disk for their music programs. It has
27 samples, only three of which are similar to those in
DeluxeMusic. The 19 samples from Instant Music (six of
which are DeluxeMusic duplicates) are compatible as
well. The samples are very good, but the songs on these
disks are singularly unimpressive. They have been im-
proved substantially on the Deluxe upgrade but still
leave something to be desired. Other music files and
samples are reviewed in this issue, but most of the sam-
ples play an octave low in DeluxeMusic. According to
Bob Hoover, co-designer of the Amiga ROM kernal,
this is because the IFF music "standard" (which really
isn't) doesn't specify octave numbers. It isn't a big prob-
lem as DeluxeMusic will play any or all staves an octave
higher or lower than written.
Electronic Chops
DeluxeMusic will only play IFF samples (real-world
sounds recorded digitally); you can't design your own
sounds with it. However, samples can be tailored dur-
ing playback with 16 different play styles that can be
applied to groups or individual notes. Traditional musi-
cians develop technique through years of grueling prac-
tice but DeluxeMusicians show their chops by inspired
instrumentation and use of play styles. Don't underesti-
mate them; selecting the right instrument and using the
right play style makes the difference between a lifeless
and a brilliant performance. The same instrument can
sound plucked, or played smoothly legato with vibrato
or portamento. You can adjust play styles with tempo
and amplitude changes until your piece is arranged ex-
actly as you want it.
The Performance
The score is displayed during playback. Static screens
of notation follow one another and keep up with the
music if vou're reading it (even with the sounding notes
being flashed in red), but are not quite fast enough to
play along with on an instrument. You'll be disap-
pointed if you like stereo because voices switch back
and forth between speakers depending on which chan-
nel is free. Parts are often broken between speakers;
Electronic Arts recommends you play DeluxeMusic
monophonically. (This is a problem with the Amiga it-
self as other Amiga music programs do the same miser-
able thing.)
A show memory feature tells you how much is left
and reflects only internal "chip" memory — the 512K
area in which all music and graphics data must reside.
Without expansion RAM, there are about 100K free.
With it, sonic of the program is moved into fast RAM,
thereby freeing the maximum of 260K for music. Other I
48 July/August 1987
Circle 163 on Reader Servce card.
TV*TEXT
A Text Presentation Program for the Amiga
LETTERING
■ VIII f^F TL'"' ^/ivt? * '! U l< « *■
uses 4096 colors
adjustable light and depth
italics, bold and underline
*V*TEXT is IFF compe
Use it with...
^/T^Kif^
use with IFF prognuns or GENLOCK
2 level strobe and' drop shadow
justify-center, left and right
SAVE 150,000! TV*TEXT brings
capabilities of the most expensive
character-generators to you and your
Amiga, Pocket all that money while you
create professional quality lettering for
presentation graphics or live video pro-
duction with Genlock. TV*TEXT uses
the mouse, high or medium screen
resolution, the full Amiga palette of 4096
colors, NTSC or PAL, and IFF format.
You can use any Amiga fonts, such as
Zuma Fonts, workbench fonts, etc. Spac-
ing can be adjusted and characters can
be stretched, squeezed or even rotated!
Text can be positioned with left/right
justification or centering.
Make titles exciting with rendering at-
tributes such as italics, bold, underline,
outline, edge, extrude (3D), cast/drop
shadows and strobes. Create attractive
backgrounds using wallpaper or tile pat-
terns. Then captivate your audience with
special effects made by applying those at-
tributes to lines, boxes, circles and
ellipses.
If you want to make your text look
special, try TV»TEXT!
JdJW Wdflpd|*a' WrtlilJdptl wdlUAS^fca WdUlJdljei- Wdl
wllpaper wallpaper wallpaper wallpaper wallpaper wallpaper
'ralpaper walpaper wallpaper. wallpaper walpaper wallpaper
xt walpaper wallpaper wallpaper walpaper walpaper wal
Mllnano!" lo^tlrwiw woilmtw lu^lrwrtflr up^flnwoi 1 tuilltvida':
wallpaper background pattern
rendered ellipse with outline
stretched character spacing
extruded (3-D) with drop shadow
horizontal lines with outline & shadow
different font styles and sizes
TV*TEXT
Only $99 95
Other products by Zuma Group:
Zuma Fonts Volume 1,2,3 — J34.95 each
See your local dealer or call:
Brown-Wagh
Publishing
1-800-451-0900
1-408-395-3838 (w California)
16795 Lark Ave., Suite 210, Los Gates, CA 95030
Dealers Call: APEX Resources, Computer Software Services, East Texas Distributing, Ingram Software, Micro D, National Software Distributors, Phase 4 (Canada), Silicon Valley Products, Softkat,
Software House, Southern Technologies, Triangle. Amiga Is a registered trademark of Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
AC/FORTRAN
Mainframe quality, full feature ANSI FORTRAN 77
compiler includes; Debugger, linker. Ubrary Manager,
Runtime Library', IEEE math, and C interface. Supports
Complex numters. Virtual arrays, Overlays and
Unking. Not copy protected. $295.
Version for CSA 68020/68881 Turbo board also available S-WS.
AC/BASIC
From the authors of Mieroft BASIC compiler for Macintosh,
comes AC/ BASIC for the Amiga. Companion compiler to the
Amiga BASIC interpreter has more features and includes
BLOCK IF, CASE statement, and STATIC keyword extensions
and executes up to 50x faster. AC BASIC is the new BASIC
reference for MC68000 based personal computers. Not copy
protected. $195.
abs»:ft
Scientific/Engineering Software Telephone orders welcome
4268 N. Woodward, Royal Oak, Ml 48072/(313) 549-71 i 1
Ami£i trademark ii (jommulurv Amiga Microsoft midt'irark tif Miowili (iirp
Circle 175 on Reader Service card.
AMIGA" &
COMMODORE
PRODUCTS
Prices so low we will not advertise
them. ..We will not be undersold!
Inside CA 1-818/366-5305
Outside CA 1-800/443-9959
KJ Computers, quite possibly the largest Amiga dealer in the USA,
stocks all Amiga and third party Amiga products, as well as most
popular peripherals and supplies. KJ is easy to do business with,
their staff is knowledgeable, and delivery fast. For all this, and best
pricing available, give KJ Computers a call today!
COMPUTERS
10815 Zelzah Avenue, Granada Hills, California 91344
RAM doesn't show because it isn't useable.
MIDI Chorus
DcluxeMusic sends MIDI data over all 16 channels us-
ing up to 128 presets each. An appropriately-equipped
system can play chords of up to 36 notes (four Amiga
and 32 MIDI) over a six-octave range (from CI to C7).
Amplitude commands control the dynamics with a ve-
locity-sensitive keyboard. Should you find Amiga tunes
texturally thin, adding a relatively inexpensive synthe-
sizer like the Casio CZ 101 or Yamaha FB-01 expansion
module (which has no "piano" keyboard) will provide
you with a very respectable home MIDI studio. If you
do this, try using the Amiga as a drum machine.
Even though the Amiga will only play four parts by
itself, scores of over four parts are possible, Deluxe-
Music lets you set the amplitude for every note and will
play the loudest four notes of any chord. Failing thai
distinction, it will automatically play the single highest
and three lowest notes. A total of eight instruments are
available whether Amiga or MIDI, but I wish you could
assign both types to one staff.
D.S. al fine
Although the manual is well-organized and has an in-
dex, it's a revision of the Macintosh version. Many fea-
tures are undocumented including playing Amiga and
MIDI music together, using fonts and disk operations.
For the most part, these and other details are covered
in the addenda. DeluxeMusic is copy-protected, but
owners can purchase an unprotected disk to install on
a hard drive. Although I don't have one, the people I've
talked with who do say it functions nicely.
Electronic Arts will not automatically provide the up-
grade disk and addenda to registered owners. Steve Pe-
terson, Electronic Arts' DeluxeMusic project manager
says thai users having problems should complain to
their customer service department at 415/571 -ARTS.
"They will be asked to mail in their original disk as
proof-of-purchase," he explained, "And will be provided
with the upgrade and additional documentation at
no cost."
DeluxcMusic's strong points are accurate notation,
flexibility and ease of use and MIDI-compatibility. I
found it delightful to work with. Although it won't
teach you music and it isn't perfect, DeluxeMusic is a
fine program. It was worth the wait. At last we can quit
reading about it and start making music. ■
/Vggr Heirington writes regularly for AmigaWorld ami other
microcomputer publications ami specializes in the areas of mu-
sic and telecommunications. Write to her c/o AmigaWorld
Editorial.
DeluxeMusic Construction Set
Electronic Arts
1820 Gateway Drive
San Mateo, CA 94404
415/571-7171
S99
512K required.
50 July/August I9S7
CircSe 118 on Reader Service card
rcle 165 on Reaoer Service card.
PUBLISHER 1000
Desktop Publishing for the Amiga
NEWSLETTERS
The
HEADUNE NEWS
11=111
~~~l
~r377~E.
~ .- ,-
=======
^-.rl r -r~:
-—.".- :~
l==i=||
======
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any size/shape of columns
text overflows into next column
multiple columns; multiple pages
REPORTS
SALS REVIEW
PRODUCT SAXES
► justified text
► read IFF graphics
► move, resize or crop graphics
PUBLISHER
1000
Only $ 199 95
Developed by N.E. Software Group
Hot off the press in less than one hour!
Now, you can create all kinds of printed
output quickly without complication or ex-
pense. With PUBLISHER 1000 you can
publish your own newsletters, signs,
reports, presentations — just about any-
thing you can imagine.
It is amazingly easy to use. Just draw a
"guide" box on the screen — any size or
shape — and type in it. Then move the
box (with the text) where you want it on
the printed page, and that's all.
You can improve its appearance by
selecting from PUBLISHER 1000 fonts,
Zuma Fonts, workbench fonts, etc. If you
want graphics, just start drawing lines,
borders or solids — again, any size or
shape — anywhere on the page. It's really
as simple as that!
Merge text or pictures from other pro-
ducts, such as Scribble! or Deluxe Paint.
Then you can enhance the text or resize
and crop the pictures. You will see full-
page views of your work in order to
review before you print.
PUBLISHER 1000 supports medium
and high screen resolutions, and all
printers in Preferences. Soon we will in-
clude a POSTSCRIPT laser printer driver.
You will be able to combine text, line art,
even digitized photographs on one page for
printers such as the Apple LaserWriter,
QMS -PS, Linotype Linotronic, etc. All
customers will be updated — free of
charge — with the POSTSCRIPT driver.
For business, pleasure or school, make
those hot presses a lot hotter with
PUBLISHER 1000.
SIGNS
Club Meeting
This Tuesday
Meeting Aoenda: Jaj
Coming events: ' MT
Ltiai's siem in
snfSuiare
draw directly on page
different font styles and sizes
custom line/shade patterns
PRESENTATIONS
—
■ -—
s= ™!?-
h?= IhSE |
'_]
IT] _J
MQPOSED ORCAKZmOH
JUNE 1997
lines, borders and shading
text centered in boxes
underline, italics and bold
See your local dealer or call:
Brown-Wagh
Publishing
1-800-451-0900
1-408-395-3838 Gnoatfbrnuo
16795 Lark Ave., Suite 210, Los Gatos,CA 95030
Dealers Call: APEX Resources, Computer Software Services, East Teias Distributing, Ingram Software, Micro D, National Software Distributors, Phase 4 (Canada), Silicon Valley Products, Softkat,
Software Rouse, Southern Technologies, Triangle. Postscript Is a trademark of Adobe Systems. Amiga Is a registered trademark of Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
Orders 1-800-221-6086
Only 1-800-843-3485 az
Customer
Support
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Champ GFL Football
Champ Goll Volume 1
Chessmaster200C
Deep Space
Delender of the Crown
Deja Vu
Earl Weaver Basebal
faery Tail Adventure
Flight Simulator II
Gaio
Grand Slam Tennis
Gunship
Hacker
Hacker I]
Ha ley Project
Infocom Titles
Jet
Keyboard Cadet
King of Chicago
Kings Quest I. II. Ill
Leader Boars
LB Tournament #1
Marble Madness
Masiertype
Mean 18
Mean IB Famous Courses
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EDUCATION
Discovery Math
Discovery Spell
Discovery Trivia
First Shapes
Geometry Motion Picture
Great Stales
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Math Talk
New Tech Coloring Book
Perlect Score Sal
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True Basic Math Titles
$24
$24
$24
$33
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$13
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$23
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$23
$36 ea.
POLICY: $3.00 minimum shipping. All prices subject
to change (hopefully down!) No surcharge lor credit
cards. Send cashier check or money order lor laster
delivery. Personal checks take two weeks to clear.
Defectives replaced with same Item only ■ no exchanges
or refunds. C.O.D., Foreign APO, School purchase
Ofdera accepted. A2 residents add 6.5% sales Ux.
GRAPHICS
3-0 Animations
Aegis ArtPack#1
Aegis Draw
Aegis Draw Plus
Aegis Impact
Animator/Images
Car Tips For Women
Christmas Video
Computer Art Gallery
Deluxe Companion
Deluxe HBlp
Deluxe Paint 2. D
Deluxe Paint Art Parts #2
Deluxe Print
Deluxe Video
Dig! Paint
Digi View (Color)
DPairuArt 4 Utility Disk
DPrint Arts Utility
Dynamic Cad
Gallery of images
JDK Fonts
Print Master Art Gallery I
Print Master Art Gallery II
Print Master Plus
Pro Video CGI
Zuma Fonts 1,2,3
$14
$22
$80
$170
$63
$99
$14
$14
$14
$20
$13
$85
$19
$65
$65
Call
$143
$19
$19
Call
$14
$22 ea.
$19
$19
$32
$131
$23 ea.
PRODUCTIVITY
2 + 2 Home Management
Analyze Vs 2.0
Acquisition
BBS PC
BTS
CLIMate
O Buddy
Financial Cookbook
Financial Plus
Flow
Gizmoz
Goldspell
HomBPack
Isgur
Loolslix
MaxiComm
MaxIDesk
MaxiPlan
MaxiPlan Plus
Mi Amiga Ledger
On Line
Organize
Pagesetter
Paperclip Elite
Pnasar
Pro Write
Publisher 1000
RagstoRichesrGL
Scribble
Soliwood File II
Superbase
Talker
Vip Prolessional
Vizawnte
Word Perlect
Zing!
$64
$97
$191
$62
Call
$26
Call
$33
$247
$74
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Call
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$97
$32
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$130
$61
$46
$63
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Call
$62
MO
Call
$139
$63
$79
$95
$47
$153
Call
Call
$49
SOUND & MUSIC
Deluxe Music
Future Sound
Gallery of Holiday Music
Gallery ol Songs Hldy Ed
Instant Music
It's Only Hock & Roll
MusicStudio
Perfect Sound
Sonix
$65
$129
$14
$14
$32
$20
$30
$59
$51
HARDWARE
256k Ram
A-Time
C-64 Emulator
Camera W/iensWV1410
Easyl
Midi Device
Midi Gold
Modem/on li nB/cable
Mousepad (large)
Mousepad (small)
Penmouse Plus
Starboard 2MB
Starboard Multifunction
3.5 Drive (1010]
5,25 Drive W/XFMR
AtOOO Package
A20OQ Package
A500
$7B
S49
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$225
$395
$36
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Call
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PROGRAMMING
A/C Basic
APL 66000
Digital Link
Diskwik
Dos-2-Dos
Fortran
G rabbi!
Lattice "C" Compiler V3.1
Lisp
Macro Assembler
Manx "C |Comm)V3-4
Manx ■'C (Devi V3.4
Manx "C" (Prof)
Marauder II
MBtascope Debugger
Mirror
Mirror Hacker Package
Modula II Commercial
Modula II Developer s
Modula II Personal
Pascal
Shell
Text -Ed
Toolkit
True Basic
Call
$255
$55
$36
$41
$195
$23
$165
$139
$70
$330
203
$169
$29
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S3.:
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sue
Orders TO:
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P.O. Box 48407
FTioenix. AZ 85075
In your
FREE EA
T-ShlPlI
Buy any two EA programs (excluding
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CALL FOR FREE CATALOG
Anii^j i> j irjili-mjrk irf ( ismrnsidmr iMrifH liu
Circle 207 on Reader Service card.
u
N N
N I
MAKING MUSIC THAT SELLS
Y
ou may not know her name, but if you have been exposed to radio or
television even sporadically in the past 10 years (and who hasn't?), you
have heard her sounds. After all, Suzanne Ciani isn't called the Jingle
Genius for nothing. Her credits would fill at least a couple of magazine pages in
small print. They include tunes, sound-effects and audio enhancements for the
likes of Ffepsi and Coca Cola, Lincoln/Mercury, Merrill Lynch and Energizer
batteries.
Suzanne Ciani has been so successful in the advertising jingle business that last
year her company, Ciani/Musica Inc., built a state-of-the-art $600,000 recording
studio in the heart of New York City. It is available to outsiders by referral only,
and since it's a beta-testing site for a number of equipment manufacturers, it offers
everything you ever heard of in the way of digital music-makers including a
Synclavier and, of course, an Amiga. "We've had an Amiga since last fall," Ciani
told me when I interviewed her earlier this year, "And I think it has enormous
potential— it looks real good." So good, in fact, that at the time of the interview,
she was intensely involved in composing music for a series of live performances
for which the Amiga will be the central controlling device.
Most of those performances have past, but on July 25th, Ciani will present a full-length solo concert at The Poly Technic Fine Arts Center
in San Luis Obispo, California, for the Summer Arts Institute, along with a lecture on electronic synthesis. She will also be using the Amiga
on a September concert tour of Israel in conjunction with Potenza's The Peaceable Realm, a 300-foot biblical canvas.
Ciani and her staff designed her Amiga MIDI-performance system to be easily transportable and therefore as compact as possible. "We're
using eight rack-mounted Yamaha TX8 16 expansion modules," she said. (These are programmable synthesizers without piano-type keyboards,
which are unnecessary under computer control.) "Each module has its own TX90 processor, and I'll be playing live on a Roland digital
piano and a Super JX," she explained. Ciani will program, control and coordinate sounds from these digital instruments using the Amiga
with Magnetic Music's MIDI software, Texture. She doesn't plan to use Amiga -generated sound.
In addition to her success in the advertising industry, Ciani is involved with video imagery and she released two music videos last
November. She has written a good deal of original music, some of which is available on the RCA/Red Seal Skylark label. Her latest release
is The Velocity OF Love which is a collection of 12 very expressive, subtle compositions. I find it hard to believe that such lush, romantic
music was created by this compact, elfin woman using only steel and silicon. She actually became involved with electronic circuit design
while creating the synthetic voice for Bally's electronic pinball machine "Xenon" and although she has a classical music background, says
that making music is the only reason she is involved with technology. The list of equipment in her new studio reads like a MIDI buyer's
guide and there isn't a traditional music instrument anywhere in the entire facility.
Ciani is planning to concentrate on music composition and performance in the immediate future, which was her goal before she was
sidetracked into commercial music for, she admits, commercial reasons. (While in college, she became enamored of electronic synthesis
when she went to work for Donald Buchla, a pioneer in the industry, but couldn't make enough money performing to afford the equipment
she wanted.) She is presently negotiating with a new recording company and hopes to have several Compact Discs and LPs on the market
soon. Although she couldn't make any projections, she is hopeful that they will make her Amiga performances available. □
— Peggy Harrington
AmigaWorld S3
Sonix:
Once Upon a Time
There Was Musicraft
The happy story of The Little Music Program
Who Finally Did.
N
By Ben and Jean Means
ot too far away in the not so long ago, F.vervware and
Commodore conceived a smart little music program
called Musicraft. Sadly. Musicraft never saw the light of
a computer store software display. But somehow thou-
sands of buggy copies found their way to Amiga own-
ers, who had been eagerly awaiting (he melodious
program. In defiance of its pre-release demise, Musi-
craft song scores and synthesizer patches soon
appeared on electronic bulletin boards and filled manv
a happy computer home with music. And that's not the
end of the story.
Happily, Aegis Development has gallantly rescued Mu-
sicraft from software oblivion by purchasing the pro-
gram's world-wide rights. Redubbed Sonix, this new
version of an old program has been thoroughly de-
bugged by programmer Mark Riley and expanded with
some nifty features. Those of you who have the old Musi-
craft will be glad to know that Sonix will play your old
scores and synth patches. Best of all, it won't drive you
buggy with Guru Meditations like Musicraft did,
Sonix has three basic parts: the Synthesizer, Score and
Keyboard Screens. The Synthesizer Screen lets you create
custom designed sounds with analog-style controls. The
Score Screen lets you write music on a Grand Staff in
traditional music notation. The Keyboard Screen turns
your Amiga into a musical keyboard that can assign a six-
octave range of notes to almost any keys on your
QWERTY keyboard. »•
54 July/August 1987
PAINTING BY OSCAR DE MEJO
L
>;
94
,'
L^BP
*>
\>
Tlilll'l synthesizer
screen.
Willi just a flick of your mouse-driven wand, your
Amiga becomes a musical instrument — a four-voice, fully-
programmable synthesizer that digitally emulates an ana-
log synthesizer. And unlike most computer-music pro-
grams, Sonix sounds warm, not thin and cheap.
Analog synthesizers like the Minimoog and the
Prophet Five are noted for their rich, full sound. Most
digital synthesizers like the Yamaha DX7 are very crisp,
but can sound tinny if you aren't an experienced patch
programmer. Although Sonix has an all-digital synthe-
sizer, it avoids this thin sound by clever programming
that brainwashes its synthesizer into thinking analog.
Sonix is a good passageway into the mystical world of
synthesizers and the inner mysteries of patch program-
ming. Whether you understand synthesis or not, you can
create lots of fun sounds just by fiddling around with the
sliders. Or you can become a proficient patch program-
mer following the manual's detailed instructions. You
learn to develop your own sounds by using an oscillator,
a Filter, an amplifier, a harmonic generator, an envelope
generator and a phase shifter. With a few deft move-
ments of sliders, you can turn the sound of Tibetan bells
into Muttering Martians.
If that's not enough, you can change the actual shape
of the sound in the Waveform Display Window. For a
really novel effect, you can draw sounds from scratch,
sounds never before heard by the human ear, sounds that
will amuse. . . and sounds that may leave friends and
neighbors wondering about your state of mental health.
Sonix comes with some intriguing sounds like "India
synth," "Ice Bells 2," "Atlantis," "The Pleiades," "Himala-
yas," "Banjo synth," "Koto" and "Acoustic Guitar."
The Synth window also has several features not
normally found in analog synthesizers. Here beats
the digital heart of the beast. The envelope generator
is of the four-rate, four-level type pioneered by
Yamaha's FM digital DX7. This envelope generator is
superior to the traditional analog ADSR, which pro-
vides only three rates and two levels.
Sonix can also plav back sampled sounds, if they are in
the IFF format. You can then modify the sounds by
applying the envelope generator and vibrato. Aegis plans
to offer a future version that w : ill be able to use the entire
synth window to modify sampled sounds. Known as
resynthesis, this powerful technique previously was avail-
able only on digital-sampling synths costing thousands.
Compose Yourself
In the Score Window, you can compose music in tradi-
tional notation, then create your own Amiga symphony.
You pick up notes and rests with your mouse from a
display showing notes and rests of different lengths and
place them onto the Grand Staff. You can enter four
melodies and give them each a different sampled or
synthesized sound. You can change your sounds at any
time to add variety to the score. For example, the clavi-
chord in aJ.S. Bach piece could become a vibraharp or
a Minimoog synth. Or, add some marimbas, and see
what you get.
Music for Gongs and Whales
With a MIDI interface, you can add up to four more
melodies for MIDI output to external devices, giving
you an eight-piece band, all conducted by the Amiga.
The Amiga could plav Tibetan bells, claves, Chinese
gongs and synth whales, for example, while running an
external device playing the traditional drums, organ,
bass and guitar from your score. Or, MIDI instruments
can play all eight lines, if you don't want to use Amiga
sounds.
Once melodies are entered in your score, you can
edit, copy and delete them singly or in groups. You can
also choose the key and time signatures for each score
you compose. The only limit to a score's length is avail-
able memory. For simple scores using Sonix synthesizer
sounds, '>12K is adequate; for large pieces using many
sampled sounds, you'll need expansion RAM. Scores
are stored in IFF SMUS format so they can be used in
any compatible music program.
The Score Window 7 gives you your own little compo-
sition studio. During playback, you edit a score's vol-
ume, tempo, transposition and tuning with separate
sliders. To set the volume of each track individually, use
the Mixdown feature. You can further alter the play-
back of external MIDI tracks in the MIDI patch mode.
And with the Amiga's multitasking power, Sonix will
play your latest piece, along with your latest video, if
you have extra RAM.
The Sonix Score Window lacks a lot of the refine-
ments of professional scoring software like Deluxe-
Music Construction Set by Electronic Arts. DeluxeMusic
is only a music notation system (but what a music nota-
tion system!), while Sonix is mainly a synthesizer pro-
gram, But Sonix's music notation is quite adequate for
the home hobbyist and provides enough power for
most budding composers.
Notes on Composition
Composing music on any notation program is a time- ►
56 July/August 1987
Circle 135 on Reader Service card.
WE POUND VDUR SON SPOI
(It starts an inch below this line, with a multitude of great software for you.)
ENTERTAINMENT:
Activiston
Championship Golf 139.00
Portal $35.00
Shanghai $29.00
Tass Times $29.00
Bethesda Softworks
Gridiron $54.00
Commodore/Amiga
Mindwolker $39.00
Electronic Arts
Auto Duel $35.00
Bard's Tale $35.00
Chessmaster 2000 $35.00
Earl Weaver Baseball 535.00
Jaguar
Alien Fires £29.00
Micro-Illusions
Faery Tale Adventure $35.00
Micro Prose
Gunship $29.00
Silent Service $29.00
Mindscape
Balance of Power S35.00
Defender of the Crown S35.00
Dejo Vu $35.00
King of Chicago $35.00
SDI $35.00
Sinbad $35.00
Uninvited $35.00
Sublogic
Flight Simulator II 535.00
Jet 535.00
GRAPHICS/VIDEO APPLICATIONS:
Aegis Development
Animator (w/lmages) $89.00
Draw Plus (CAD) $159.00
Impact $69.00
Electronic Arts
Deluxe Paint II $89.00
Deluxe Video 1.2 $89.00
JDK Images
Pro Video CGI $149.00
Micro Illusions
Dynamic CAD CALL
New Tek
Digi View $149.00
Digi Paint S44.00
Zuma Group
TV Text $79.00
MUSIC APPLICATIONS:
Aegis Development
Sonix $60.00
Electronic Arts
Deluxe Music $69.00
Instant Music $35.00
Mimetics
Pro Midi Studio $125.00
Audio Digitizer $85.00
Midi Interfaces
Midi Gold S69.00
E.C.E. Midi $49.00
BUSINESS/FINANCIAL:
Best, Inc.
Best Business Mgmt $325.00
Byte by Byte
Financial Plus $240.00
Digital Solutions
LPD Filer $89.00
LPD Planner $89.00
LPD Writer $89.00
Finally
Phasar $79.00
Grafox
Logistix S125.00
Micro Systems Software
Analyze! 2.0 5125.00
Organize! $65.00
Scribble! 2.0 S65.00
New Horizons
Pro Write 589.00
Flow S69.00
Precision Software
Superbase Personal 5109.00
Sedona Software
Money Mentor $69.00
Softwood Company
Softwood File II S69.00
Softwood Ledger S69.00
PRODUCTIVITY/PUBLISHING:
Brown-Wagh
Publisher S149.00
Zuma Fonts 1, 2, or 3 $24.00
Gold Disk
Pagesetter $109.00
Gold Spell $39.00
UTILITIES:
Discovery Software
Grabbit! (w/Anytime!) $24.00
Key Genie 539.00
Marauder II S29.00
Metacomco
Make $54.00
Shell $54.00
Toolkit $39.00
Microsmiths
FastFonts S39.00
TxEd 529.00
JittunScft
Applications \nc.%J
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES:
Absoft
AC/Fortran $235.00
Manx
Aztec C 'Commercial' 5349.00
Aztec C Developer' $199.00
Lattice
Lattice C v3.1 $179.00
Metacomco
Assembler $79.00
Lisp 5149.00
Pascal $79.00
TDI Software
Modulo 2 'Commercial' S225.00
Modula 2 'Development" $119.00
True Basic Corp
All Titles Available CALL
TELECOMMUNICATIONS:
Anchor Automation
Volks Omega 80 (Modem) $149.00
Commodore/Amiga
AmigaTerm $39.00
Amiga 1680 Modem $169.00
Micro Systems
BBS-PC! $65.00
Online! $49.00
HARDWARE/PERIPHERALS:
**We stock a complete line of Hard Drives,
RAM Expansion, Accessories, and more...
Call for info & prices!
'DS/DD Diskettes (box of 10):
Fuji $21.00
Sony S21.00
"Disk Cases:
Teok 120 $29.00
S$-50 $15.00
Joysticks, Books, and more!
Prices may vary. Delivery subject to product availability,
Calif, orders add 6% sales tax.
rf£fe&
*to?sfles
.so/* 6 *
.\*s
^ori».ffi**5
^J&T.^w**
as
\o
<n*>3i!8i322frUlP
o°
*{5w
^«»
&&*
^c^°T^
'Co'
G*
oP
\o<
ifrt-
Loo/; Forward to huturesofl!
RO. Box 222177 Carmel, CA 93922
Circle 176 on Reader Service card.
CHILDREN'S
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
TOR YOUR AMIGA
Ages
5-10
lor 2
players
49
95
i Addition
■ Subtraction
i Multiplication
' Division
i Equations
• Word Problems
■ Multiple
Activities S
Difficulty
Levels
■ Superb
Graphics
■ Speech
OTHER AWILABLE TITLES
• READ 6f RHYME • FRACTION ACTION • KINDERAMA
• DECIMAL DUNGEON • READ- A- RAMA
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• THE WORD MASTER • MAGICAL MYTHS
2950 E. Flamingo
Greenview Plaza, Suite B
Las Vegas, NV 89121 (702) 737-8862
UNICORN"
EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE
consuming affair, but with Sonix, which is logically laid
out, it is relatively painless. The number and distance
of mouse movements necessary are mercifully few and
short for the most part.
Composing in real time on a performance-oriented
sequencer can be much quicker, but the big if in this
equation is your performance ability. If you're not a
very good keyboardist, notation software might be your
best choice for composing. It allows you to write pre-
cise, accurate music that plays back perfectly.
Even if you don't read music now, using a notation
program can teach you to read more quickly and easily.
Best of all, you can print out sheet music to hand to
any musicians you want to have perform your songs.
Jam on Your QWERTY
The Keyboard Window shows the Amiga's QWERTY
keyboard and just below it a piano keyboard so you can
customize which keys on your QWERTY keyboard play
which notes from your synthesizer over a six-octave
range. You select the Amiga key you want to assign a
note to, then select the note from the piano keyboard.
You can optimize the keyboard for any kind of scale,
melody or chord you want to play, and save a different
custom keyboard layout with each score. Riffs that
would be difficult if not impossible on a piano can be
played as easily as drumming your fingers on your
Amiga keyboard. If you have a score that uses less than
four Amiga voices, you can jam over the score on the
keyboard with the voices not being used.
A Place to Begin
If you're new to music notation and sound synthesis,
Sonix is a good place to begin. The screen layouts are
concise and the commands are simple. And Sonix is
easy to learn and fun to use.
If you demand an awesome sounding pro-synthesizer,
your choices start in the hundreds of dollars and ex-
tend into the thousands. But before you make that kind
of financial commitment, consider Sonix. You get a
gTeat sounding little synthesizer (especially when you
hook it up to a stereo system), a music notation editor
and a custom realtime keyboard. It's a wonderful music
program that, but for Aegis, might not have been.
Sonix comes with a 244-page manual that is a music
education in itself and a data disk of great sounds and
jazzy scores that will spark your own creativity.
And they all lived noisily ever after. ■
Write to Ben and jean Means clo Amiga World editorial, HO
Elm St., Peterborough, NH 03458.
Sonix
Aegis Development
2115 Pico Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90405
213/392-9972
$79.95
512K required.
58 July/August 19S'i
Circle 77 on Reader Service card.
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AMIGA
Cross Dev. Sys S 89
MindWalker S 38
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ARTWORX
Bridge 40 S 23
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BETHESDA
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TV Text $ 69
Publisher 1000 In Stock'
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Grabbit S 24
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Donald Duck , S 19
DPrira Data Disk S 25
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Financial Cookbook S 33
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EPYX
Rogue S 25
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Financial Plus $229
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A-Talk Plus S 79
FIREBIRD
Guild of Thieves 5 32
Pawn S 32
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First Shapes $ 34
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MaihTalk $ 31 .
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FINALLY SOFTWARE
Dr. Xes $ 37
Nancy S 45
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Talker S 46
FUTUREWORKS
LexCheck S 45
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Lint S 85
GO AMIGO
Printer Drivers Call
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Gold Spell S 38
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IMPULSE
Prism S 49 -.
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Galileo S 69
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All Titles Available Call
INOVATRONICS
Power Windows S 65
INTERACTIVE ANALYTIC
Expert System Kn S 55
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ISM
Surgeon..,. S 39-
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JENDAY
Conv. w/Comp S 24
JHM
Talking Color Book S 24
KENT ENGINEERING
MacroModem S 49
LATTICE
C - Regular iVav Vsis.!.. S163
C - Professional S284
dbC III Library S119
Make Utility $ 99
Panel $149
Screen Editor $ 84
MANX
Aztec C— Comm S315
Aztec C — Devel 5199
Aztec C— Prof. S149
MARK OF THE UNICORN
Hex.. $ 31
MAXISOFT
Maxiplan S 99
Maxiplan Plus S127
MERIDIEN SOFTWARE
Zing $ 49
METACOMCO
Assembler Call
Lisp S154
Make ... $ 57
Pascal $ 68
Shell $ 45 .
Toolkit S 35
METADIGM
MetaScope S 79
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CAD System Call
Discovery $ 25
Feary Tale Adven. .. In Stock
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Gunship $ 28
Silenl Service $ 24
MICROSMITHS
Fast Fonts Call
TxEd $ 32
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Analyze 20 $ 84
BBS-PC S 62
Fl-pside S 31
On-line 5 42
Organize S 63
Scribble S 61
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Quintette's.. Call
MIMETICS
SoundScape-- S130
MINDSCAPE
FREE F -yirg Disk with the pur-
Chase of any two Mmdscape
products 1 '
Balance ol Power $ 31
Bratacus $ 32
Defender of the Crown $ 31
Deja Vu $ 32
Halley Project $ 3C
Keyboard Cadet Call
King of Chicago $ 34
Racter $ 28
SAT Preparation $ 52
S.D.I S 31 .
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Uninvited.- -,. $ 31
NEW HORIZONS
Flow $ 69
ProWrite $ 78.
NEWTEK
Digi-Painl $ 49
DigiView2.0 Call
NIMBUS
Accounting S 99
PAR SOFTWARE
Par Home S 50
Par Real S 99
PROGRESSIVE
CLl-Mate $ 25
Logistix S 85
Superbase $ 81 i
Vizawrite $ 81
SEDONA
Money Mentor $ 74
SOFTWOOD
Sollwood File llsg S 89
Softwood Ledger.. . S 62
SPECTRUM HOLOBYTE
Gato - Call
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Flight Simulator S 32
Jet - $ 32
Scenery Disk #7 S 18
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City Desk $1 10
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Acquisition S182
TDI
Editor Call
Examples S 20
Grid Database Call
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Modula II— Comm. S207
Modulall— Devel $109
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THE OTHER GUYS
Keep-Trak $ 99
Match-It .....$ 29
Omega File S 60
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TIGRESS
Diskwik $ 36
TRUE BASIC, INC.
True Basic S 74 .
9 Libraries (each).. S 39
Runtime $109
TYCHON
Pnntz $ 55
UNICORN
Read& Rhyme S 33
Kinderama $ 33
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Art Gallery I. II $ 20
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dBMAN $106
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System Monitor S 39
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Amigaville
User Groups Extraordinaire
The divergent styles of FAUG and AMuse could give you ideas
for your local users group.
IF YOU ARE part of a group of Amiga afi-
cionados, making the most of your group
will come from capitalizing on its individual
and collective strengths. FAUG, the First
Amiga Users Group located in the heart of
California's silicon valley, and AMuse, an-
other high-profile bunch of AMiga USErs
from New York City, are good examples of
people who are using their local strengths
and talents to advantage.
Out of the FAUG
Organized in 1985 before the Amiga was
even widely available, FAUG's success has
been closely related to the fact that its
founders (Tim Avery, Kayvan Pcjooh and
Paul Montgomery) have tapped into the ad
vantages of their geographical location.
(Hint: Their first paid member was Jay
Miner, designer of the Amiga's multitasking
environment and former general manager
of Amiga, Los Gatos, which is just down the
road a piece.) Their meetings are devoted
to demonstrations of new products and
their list of speakers reads like an Amiga
buyer's guide: Aegis, Activision, Byte by
Byte, C Ltd., Electronic Arts, NewTek, Mi-
metics, and on and on. It's not unusual for
600 people to attend FAUG meetings, which
are held on the first Tuesday evening of
each month at the Hyatt Hotel in Palo Alto.
FAUG uses another of its strengths, the
fact that Kayvan is in the printing business,
to produce Robo City News, a slick, full-color
newsletter with articles, photos, reviews and
industry news that's mailed to subscribers
all over the world and available in many re-
tail outlets. They sponsor a very busy elec-
tronic bulletin-board system open to all
callers (415/595-2479). They also have a pub-
lic-domain program library that is aug-
mented by their own "Hot Mix Disks," a
compilation of commercial product demon-
By Peggy Herrington
strations and new software garnered from
Amiga programmers and product devel-
opers. Hot Mix Disks are available to mem-
bers for $4 a disk and by mail to non-
members for a modest additional fee. FAUG
dues are $35 a year, which entitles you to
12 issues officio City News, and access to
the disk library. Dues are used to cover ex-
penses since the casual administrative struc-
ture is closely held by FAUG founders.
Easily AMused
By contrast, AMuse of New York City is a
legal entity unto itself since it is a non-
profit corporation governed by an execu-
tive committee of annually-elected officers.
They have loose affiliations with several
other Amiga groups in the general vicinity
and a branch club known as AMuse of West
Chester (Pennsylvania, that is, which, of
course, is where Commodore is located).
The group publishes a bimonthly newsletter
that is free and widely available in retail
outlets; it has a public-domain disk library
and sponsors an open FIDO BBS (212/269-
4879); these three activities have become
traditional user group features. Membership
is SI 5 a year and meetings are held twice
monthly (on first and third Tuesdays) at the
School of Visual Arts in Manhattan (which
they are rapidly outgrowing since attend-
ance sometimes surpasses the 200 mark,
and seating is for 160). Like FAUG, AMuse
often hosts demonstrations by commercial
developers, but, unlike FAUG, they have
several special-interest groups that meet at
other times.
AMuse is stepping away from user group
tradition, however, by sponsoring a series of
nationally-oriented Amiga expositions, an
ambitious undertaking when you consider
that AMuse officers all have full-time jobs
elsewhere. Wisely, they have engaged the
services of a professional convention and
seminar service to help organize and man-
age these shows. The first AmiExpo will de-
but this fall, October 10 through 12, 1987,
at the Sheraton Centre Hotel in New York
City. From their list of seminars and speak-
ers, presentations on many exciting vertical-
market applications are planned and many
notables from the Amiga community are
planning (o participate in what looks to be
a first-rate affair.
A second AmiExpo is scheduled for early
next year (January 22-24, 1988) at the Los
Angeles Airport Hilton, and a third at the
Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago on July
22-24, 1988. All three shows will be open to
the public for an admittance fee and inter-
ested exhibitors can call 800/32A-MIGA toll
free (212/867-4663 in New York) for more
information.
YourTown, USA
The divergent styles of organization FAUG
and AMuse have chosen could give you
ideas for your local group. While the activi-
ties these groups enjoy may be beyond the
scope of your local group's resources, don't
be afraid to use die contacts and assets
available on your own home turf. Amiga de-
velopers that aren't too far away are often
delighted to make presentations at meetings
if they're invited, as are local retailers. Get-
ting together is one of the best ways to
share ideas, news and discoveries, to find
help with problems and to learn about and
try out new software. If you're not in an
Amiga user group, you might enjoy visiting
one; if you can't find a group near you,
maybe you should start one! ■
ftggy Herrington is a Contributing Editor to
Amiga World. Write to her at 1032 Forrester St.
NW, Albuquerque, NM 87012.
62 July/ August 1987
Circle 52 on Reader Serwce card
Wie World's 'Next Generation' Musk Studio.
Desktop Multi-Media Production.
N
lowhere has technology moved
so fast as in todays music studios.
Two years ago MIDI was just being
established as an industry stand-
ard and the number of music soft-
ware manufacturers could be
counted on one hand. Over the
same period music video has gone
from experimental to an established
art. Computers, video and music-
have joined to make musicians
multi-media technology artists.
Now Mimetics and Commodore-
Amiga move into the next genera-
tion technology by combining
affordable computers, music and
video into a single integrated
system which stretches beyond
music videos and creates a com-
plete]) interactive real-time music
video environment which is totally
modular with expandability to
every arena of the music perform-
ance arts.
Just imagine... one central machine
that can score synthesizers, digital
audio samples, drum machines,
audio processors and mixing con-
soles for a complete soundtrack
while it's also animating broad-
castable color graphics mixed with
live video, processed with special
effects and edited into a final
multi-media production!
Mimetics' SoundScape PRO MIDI
Studio's unique modular design
provides the power and flexibility
necessary to connect and synchron-
ize the various programs with in-
ternal and external music synthesis,
SMPTE, video tape and processing
systems. It, by itself, is the state-
of-the-art music system. Com-
bined with Amiga's video power,
SoundScape gives you a completely
new dimension in music and video
production environments.
See the next generation' possibil-
ities for music and video, today,
at your nearest Amiga/music/
video dealer, or contact Mimetics
for more information.
See us at NAMM.
rniieiicj
CORPORATION
P.O. Box 60238 Sta. A
Palo Alto, CA 94306
(408) 741-0117
The Professional Software Source
Help Key
Confounded by the utter complexity and profound
mystery and power of his Amiga, Earl -wisely
directed his trembling finger toward . . . the Help Key.
Snap Windows
Qj I use subdirectories to keep my
Textcraft documents organized, and
I use the Snapshot option to or-
ganize windows the way I want.
What I can 't do, however, is change
the size and location of the window
that appears when I open a directory
drawer. How do I get windows to
open where I want them?
Duane E Martin
Monterey Park, CA
A: Changing the default size
and location of directory win-
dows is very similar to changing
the default location of docu-
ment icons. First, open the win-
dow you want to change by
double-clicking on its drawer.
Next, move and size the window
to the place and dimensions
you want. Finally, select the
drawer icon with a single click
and choose Snapshot from the
Special Menu. Your window will
now open at the location and
size you specified.
A1000 ROM
Q: From reading your March/April
'87 story on the Amiga 2000, I
learned that the Amiga 2000 has
Kickstarl in ROM on a daughter-
board. I wonder if I can insert Kick-
start ROM chips in my Amiga
1000? 7>) you know where I can buy
Amiga ROM chips?
Also, I've been reading about the
Sidecar for almost a year, but I don't
know of any place that is selling it. I
called the Amiga support line at
Commodore (215/436-4200), but I
By Bob Ryan
never got through. Do you have any
more information about Sidecar?
C. Graham-Cringley
Framingham, MA
A: You can buy a Kickstart Elim-
inator Kit for your Amiga 1000
from Creative Microsystems
Inc., 10110 SW Nimbus #B1, Ti-
gard, OR 97123, 503/684-9300
for $129.95. You'll have to in-
stall the ROM yourself — a tricky
process. The Kickstart Elimina-
tor comes with a disk that lets
you add (using AddMem) the
256K RAM formerly used by
Kickstart to your system as ex-
pansion RAM. I don't like using
AddMem, because I don't want
to have any memory conflicts
with auto-config devices, so
Kickstart Eliminator is not for
me. (I also wonder about possi-
ble bus contention since the
Writable Control Store is on the
chip RAM side of the bus.) If
you want to throw away your
Kickstart disk, however, Kick-
start Eliminator will do the
trick.
I don't have any more infor-
mation on Sidecar than you do.
It was First promised last Fall,
then by Christmas, then in the
first quarter of '87. It's now
April 13 and you can't buy one
in the U.S. I shouldn't be sur-
prised anymore when Commo-
dore promises a product then
fails to deliver, but I am. And I
understand your problems with
the Amiga support line; I get
calls almost daily from readers
who are tired of trying to get
through. Commodore needs
more people to handle user's
questions. I just hope that Com-
modore shows more interest in
listening to customer problems,
since current owners are the
best Amiga salespeople. If they
fail to support their current
owners, they may not get many
new ones.
Hertz So Bad
Qj In Amiga World's review of
sound digitizers for the Amiga (Jan-
uary/February '87, p. 29) it is im-
plied that the Amiga can output
sounds of frequencies up to I5KHz,
I remember reading somewhere when
the Amiga first came out that the
mach ine couldn 't produce sounds
above 7 KHz, I've never seen this is-
siw addressed in tiny publication.
What 's the straight story?
Karl Keys
San Francisco, CA
A: According to page 156 of the
Amiga Hardware Reference Man-
ual, the low-pass Filter that elimi-
nates aliasing distortion cuts off
signals above 7KHz. The Amiga
can't use its internal sound
hardware to generate signals
above 7KHz. We apologize if the
article seemed to imply other-
wise.
Bus of Contention
Qj I recently read a message on a
bidletin board system stating that
the Amiga 500 is slower than the
Amiga 1000. I thought tlie machines
were essentially the same. Is the
Amiga 500 a slmopoke?
Frank Rockette
Stonington, CT
A: The Amiga 500 has the same
clock rate as the 1000 and
shouldn't be any slower. What
could be a problem is the A501
Memory Expansion that plugs
into the underside of the 500.
Unlike expansion memory that
plugs into the side of your 1000
(memory that is only accessible
by the Amiga's 68000 CPU), the
memory on the A501 shares its
bus (its data communication
lines) with chip memory. When
the Amiga custom chips access
chip memory to handle sound
or the video display, the 68000
can be shut out from accessing
the A501. This is not a common
occurrence, however, because
the Amiga custom chips are de-
signed to access the bus while
the 68000 is working internally.
The custom chips do have
priority, however, so if you're
running a heavy graphics appli-
cation, such as one using Five
bit-planes, the custom chips will
take over the machine for entire
cycles and not just the parts of
cycles not used by the 68000 for
external access. As a result, pro-
grams running in A501 memory-
will run slower because the
68000 can't access the memory
to fetch the next instruction or
to store a temporary result. To
avoid this problem, you might
want to forego buying the A501
board and expand the 500 via
the expansion bus only. ■
64 July/August 198"/
The Machine To Unleash
Your Imagination . . .
The Magazine
To Explore
Its Vision
For a computer as extraordinary as the Amiga;
you need a magazine that can match its excellence,
AmigaWorid.
AmigaWorid is the only magazine which provides you
with ideas and information to get maximum performance
from the Amiga's tremendous power and versatility.
Each issue gives you valuable insights to boost your productivity and
enhance your creativity.
Whether you choose the Amiga as a serious business tool for its speed and
multi-tasking capabilities ... or for its superb graphics, drawing, color, (over 4,000
colors), and animation ... or for its state-of-the-art music and speech ... or for
its scientific and CAD abilities, AmigaWorid can help you achieve superior results.
With its timely news features, product announcements and reviews, useful
operating tips, and stunning graphics, AmigaWorid is as dynamic as the market
it covers.
Don't wait! Become a charter subscriber and save 25% off the basic subscrip-
tion rate and nearly 37% off the cover price. Return the coupon or the attached
card. For immediate service, call toll free 1-800-258-5473. In NH, call, 1-924-9471.
I want to discover the full potential
of this powerful machine. And save
25% off the basic rate as a charter sub-
scriber. Enter my one year subscription
(6 issues) to AmigaWorid for the low
price of $14.97. If I'm not satisfied at any
time, I will receive a full refund — no
questions asked.
□ Payment Enclosed □ Bill Me
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Address
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Canada and Mexico $17.97, Foreign Surface
$34.97, Foreign Airmail 569.97. 1 year only,
US funds drawn on US bank. Please allow
6-8 weeks for delivery.
AmigaWorid
P.O. Box 868, Farmingdale, NY 11737
Amiga is a trademark ot Commodore-Amiga, Inc 377B2
Reviews
Superbase Personal
More powerful than a file
manager, able to leap tall
graphics in a single bound,
it's . , . Superbase!
By Al Willen
Superbase Personal gives the illusion of
being simplistic. Quite on the contrary, Pre-
cision Software's relational database pro-
gram — while easy to learn and use — is
extremely powerful and complex. Database
management systems are among the most
complicated applications programs, so a
certain degree of studying is required to get
Superbase up-and-running. But Superbase is
layered so even a novice can do simple
things, like address files, in no time.
To the delight of non-typists, Superbase is
almost completely Intuition driven by the
mouse. The five pull-down menus (Project,
Record, Process, Set and System) each offer
dozens of subchoices. With them you can
not only establish and customize your data-
base, but create or expand subsequent file
structures, and display or print your files in
a variety of ways.
Constantly open and similar to a spread-
sheet's work area, the resizeable Main Dis-
play Window allows you to manipulate any
field's information. You move through the
window with 12 control buttons similar to
those on a videocassette recorder. By click-
ing on a button you can rewind the file to
the first record, fast forward, fast backward,
skip to the next record, go to the previous
record and pause the display, among other
things.
However, unlike a VCR, there are three
specialized database buttons. The Key
Lookup Button will retrieve a individual
record or records based upon the current
index and one user-defined criteria. The
Filter Button lets you define a set of criteria
that Superbase uses for record searching.
The Filter Requester simply presents the
file's various fields in a roll-down secondary
window, along with a control panel consist-
ing of numeric and Boolean choice gadgets.
Besides searching through your file for spe-
cific records, this requester allows pattern
matching and wildcards, as well as a case in-
sensitive LIKE operator which will find a
text string regardless of whether the indi-
vidual characters are upper or lower case.
The last Display Window button opens up
a secondary graphics window for IFF
picture files.
Diversity Not Difficulty
In the Project mode, you can create a new
file or index, open a previously established
file, field, index or query; edit a file's inter-
nal structure, save a file or query, remove
(delete) a file or index and exit. For true
inter-file relationships, Superbase can work
on more than one open file at the same
time.
File size and maximum field quantity are
limited only by your machine's RAM and
disk drive capacity. Superbase also allows
the user to specify up to 999 indices per
file. An index is a field, sometimes called a
kev field, from which a database program
can use to sort a file. About three years ago,
even the most powerful systems only of-
fered one or two indices per file.
A query is a user-defined set of directions
which forces Superbase to display files in a
highly-formatted manner. Because query
files can be saved, and retrieved later, a va-
riety of different display formats can be se- ^
njgpsj'hs*; ..Art instil on Artist
ReaoiF, Auguste
The Luncheon at the Boating Party
58.7 x 67.9 in
66July/Augu i l 1987
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reports.
To create a new file, simply select New. A
secondary window opens showing a viewing
screen of newly created field names, their
attributes, their format and any additional
pertinent information. The New Field win-
dow is typical of Superbase's windows: pow-
erful, but easy to use.
In a file of customers, for example, to
create a new field in a file, type its name,
Customer Number, in the name box. To in-
dicate that the field's type, click the nu-
meric button. The Number Requester offers
a variety of ways to represent a simple [lum-
ber, from scientific notation to dollar signs
and commas automatically inserted. Press-
ing the Required button forces the end-user
to always supply a customer number for
each new record. The Validation function
lets you specify a range of acceptable values
for entries within a field. To save a new
field and related information press Add. In
a similar fashion, you can establish Text
(field lengths are defined), Date (for time/
date coding of your records) and External
fields (such as picture files which can be
treated as fields within a record). The Exter-
nal fields meld graphics with textual data,
so, for example, a real estate agent could
store together a picture of a house and in-
formation about the house.
The last option on the Project control
panel is a Calculation button which forces
Superbase to automatically calculate a nu-
meric field value based upon values con-
tained in two or more previous fields in the
file. Similar to techniques found in spread-
sheet programs, the feature supports all nu-
meric and Boolean operators, plus 29 built-
in functions.
The Record Mode allows you to dupli-
cate, create, edit, delete and save records.
Unlike most features found in Superbase,
this mode supports both mouse and key-
board selection of options (ie. Amiga Key
■f First Letter of Choice).
On Display
The third Menu option. Process, lets you
manipulate files and fields. The Update
command performs global changes on a file
based on user-defined rules. The second op-
tion, the most powerful in the Superbase
system, is Query which establishies if the file
will be sent to the CRT, printer or disk, and
how it will look. Using a Query control
panel you indicate which fields will be
shown, their order, what filters or search
limitations will be used, how the index file
will be sorted and what file calculations
(record counts, average means of numerical
fields, field sums and report/group catego-
rizing) will be performed.
Other Process menu options remove files
or fields, import or export ASCII files to
and from Superbase, print address labels
and direct output to the printer rather than
the screen. The Labels option is the best
I've seen and allows the user to fine tune
the printing of address labels using a vari-
ety of different printers and paper label
stocks, widths and sizes. There's even a lest
label button for easy set up.
Set mode contains a screen/printer toggle,
a table/form/record view toggle, a paging
on/off switch and various number, date- and
product customizing options. The program-
mers provided Superbase with a number of
monetary symbols, date conventions, num-
ber formats and external file delimeters so
that people worldwide can use the program.
The lable/form/record view toggle allows
you to display the records of a file with the
field names and values in three different
ways. Table View displays the field names
horizontally in the first row, followed by
many records scrolling downward. The Page
On option pauses the output. Great for in-
voices, bills and other formatted docu-
ments, Form View allows you to graphically
position, via the mouse, the various fields
on the display screen. One record is shown
per screen. Record View shows a single rec-
ord with field names listed vertically in the
left column.
The last menu mode. System, tells you
about Superbase's system. A DOS option
sorts and lists the current directory; chang-
ing drives and search paths is a snap. Status
gives a complete synopsis of the currently
opened file, including stats on all field
names, field types, special field require-
ments, indices and whether they're unique
or not. Like all Superbase outputs, this list-
ing can be sent to your printer. Screen
Dump directs all screen output, including
picture files, to a supported graphics
printer. System List shows any text files in
your directory, while the System Reorgan-
izer helps reclaim wasted disk space caused
by frequent deletions from a saved file.
The Buggy and the Bizarre
Superbase is a fantastic program, well
worth its price, but version 1.0 does have
some problems. Because Superbase is pre-
dominately mouse driven, good typists may
find the point and click input method te-
dious. Superbase can export ASCII files for
sorted database reports, but these reports
cannot be used in word processors, such as
Textcraft. I tried linking an .info file with
the exported ASCII file, but with no luck.
However, the ASCII file can be read and al-
tered with ED, from the CLE
More oversights than flaws, there are a
few additions I'd like to see in the next ver-
sion. A global search command would be
helpful, so you don't have to set up a query-
file to sequencially search for a specific
value in each field of all records. Although
Superbase's User Guide is excellent, there is
no Help key for instant on-line assistance.
A more serious flaw is that a few options
of Superbase will not operate correctly with
some third-party brands of peripheral
equipment. Obviously, since non-copy pro-
tected Superbase uses a hardware key,
which plugs into the second port, other
port devices will have to be temporary re-
moved. I also found that I had to remove
several other pieces of parallel port periph-
eral equipment (FutureSuund) from my sys-
tem before Superbase would work correctly.
Superbase is the easiest, most user-
friendly program for the Amiga that I've
tested thus far. This coupled with Super-
base's power and wonderful versatility make
Superbase a must have addition to your
Amiga library.
Superbase Personal
Progressive Ibripherals and Software
464 Kalamath St.
Denver, CO 80204
303/825-4144
Si 49. 95
512K required.
Texture
If you want professional quality,
expect a professional price.
By Ben and Jean Means
Back when synthesizers were monophonic
and MIDI was a skirt length, Roger Powell
was already making music with computers.
Synths and MIDI have come a long way,
and so has Roger Powell with his profes-
sional MIDI sequencer, Texture 2.0.
Texture is a professional songwriting tool
for professional musicians written by a
professional musician. Roger's years of ex-
perience as a synthesist with Todd Rund-
gren's Utopia shaped the basic idea ot
Texture: to gel quickly and easily from the
bare bones of an idea to a full-blown song,*"
68 July/August 1987
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Composing is not as easy as taking the
disk out of the box and booting up, how-
ever. Before you start you'll have to buy a
MIF-AMG adaptor ($125) and a Roland
MPU-401 MIDI interface ($295, but gra-
ciously donated for this review by Whit-
taker Music of Long Beach, CA). Since the
program doesn't use the Amiga's internal
voices, you'll also need at least one MIDI
synthesizer as a sound source and to
input notes.
Utopian Composition
With Texture, translating your ideas into
music is simple. Notes are recorded into
Patterns, then Patterns are Linked together
to create Songs. Each Pattern has 24 tracks
to record on; this is like having a 24-track
MIDI tape recorder to capture all your
ideas, which can then be spliced together
into a complete Song.
Texture lets you record 96 different pat-
terns, each from one to 999 beats long.
Since all of these 96 patterns are 24 tracks
deep, you have a maximum of 2,304 inde-
pendent sequences. This software sequencer
offers all the recording features that higher
priced hardware sequencers do, and it's eas-
ier to program. Carting your Amiga around
for playback at live shows can be a little
clunky, but software sequencers really shine
in the studio.
Your raw tracks can be edited in a myriad
of ways. Texture provides a Programmable
Punch In and Punch Out function that al-
lows you to fix small mistakes without rere-
cording a whole track. Tracks can be
moved, transposed, mixed, muted and fil-
tered. You can change the speed, loudness
and articulation of any region of any track;
then scale the changes to create precise val-
ues of ritardando or accelerando, crescendo
or dimuendo and legato or staccato effects.
The Copy function gives you cut-and-paste
editing, word processor style, while the Fill
function creates a loop of any length that
can play throughout the pattern. Best of all,
you can edit while the pattern is playing
and reverse anything you don't like with the
Undo command. So you can try out your
wildest musical ideas without having to
worry about losing the original track!
The Record Buffer lets you jam over a
looping pattern, ever in search of the per-
fect take. When at last your fingers falter
and your ears just can't stand another note,
you invoke the buffer, which has faithfully
stored all those precious takes. Now you
can pick and choose the best of all of your
brilliant ideas, and discard the rest to safe
oblivion.
Want more flexibility? Then, you can
skulk through the darkest recesses of the
MIDI note jungle in the MIDI Event Editor,
hacking away at the elusive wrong note.
And you can insert, delete or change any
MIDI events you choose.
Link mode is where you forge your song;
here all those finely tuned patterns of
Bridge, Verse and Chorus are assembled
into a complete piece. Each of the 99 links
has programmable repeat, tempo, transposi-
tion and track muting. Link mode is great
for arranging since it lets you quickly try
out different song structures.
Don't Play in the Dark
The video screen gives software sequencers
their biggest advantage over hardware se-
quencers. Instead of peering into a small
display where mystical numbers leave you
pondering what you've really done by
punching all those buttons, software se-
quencers give you a whole screen full of
information.
Texture's screen has three areas displayed
in bright colors. The left-hand side provides
playback information such as tempo, beat
number and track status, as well as a menu
of commands. The right side of the screen
changes from a track display in Pattern
mode to a MIDI event list for step editing
atid finally to a map of pattern assignments
in Link mode. The bottom of the screen
contains the two menus of function keys
used for Pattern and Link mode, as well as
prompts for operations requiring more
than one keystroke.
Everything is clearly laid out, so you can
see exactly what you are doing, making Tex-
ture quick to learn and easy to use.
Tape sync gives you a precise timing com-
mand, which allows you to sequence multi-
ple tracks onto a multi-track tape deck, so
they will all play together. The Roland
MPU-401 uses FSK tape sync to sequence
these multiple overdubs exactly. So, if you
have a four or eight track recorder, you can
stack ail of your synthesizers together on
each overdub you record. With this method
of recording, even a modest synthesizer
setup can sound incredibly large.
No Mice Allowed
Texture was ported over to the Amiga from
the IBM PC. As such, it doesn't use the Ami-
ga's internal voices or make use of the
mouse. But Texture's mnemonic commands
soon become second nature. Record is "r,"
"p" is play, "e" is erase and so on. If you
forget a commmand, the help screen will re-
fresh your memory.
If you need more help, Texture's clear
and concise manual fills in the details. The
short start-up section is followed by an al-
phabetical list of all the program features.
Each entry defines the feature, gives an ex-
ample of how it can be used and hints.
Texture explodes the myth that powerful
sequencers are hard to learn and strenuous
to use. One of the best sequencers available.
Texture is as easy to get along with as any
piece of software I own. After only two
days, I was using virtually every part of the
program and wondering how I'd ever writ-
ten music without it- Texture even defeats
writer's block; you can discover whole new-
grooves and go where you've never musi-
cally gone before with all the buffers, loops
and high-powered editing.
Texture is not cheap at S715. including
the interfaces, but you get what you pay for
and more. If you need a fast, friendly song-
writing tool, Texture is hard to beat.
Encore, Roger, encore.
Texture
Magnetic Music
RD #1
North Smith Rd.
LaGrangeville, NY 12540
914/677-8586
S295
5I2K required.
B.E.S.T. Business
Management
Put away your beans,
the Amiga can do all your
counting for you.
By Ted Salamone
Any (legal) business needs to keep finan-
cial records, track merchandise and channel
their flood of funds to the proper accounts.
A seamlessly integrated system, B.E.S.T.
Business Management handles Accounts Re-
ceivable, Accounts Payable, Genera! Ledger,
Inventory Control, Service Control, Order
Entry, Invoicing, Purchasing and Point of
Sale. The multi-module, extremely flexible
Report Writer will fill even the largest cor-
porate briefcase with logically formatted
journals, audit trails, invoices and purchase
orders.
Everything is tied together neatly with ex-
ceptionally high-quality documentation and I
70 July/August 1987
Reasons to add
Alegra are
stacking up.
■ Bill Volk, Aegis Corporation, Vice President Software Development
"The Alegra is an excellent value and speeds up operations of Aegis Draw
substantially, it works well with 1.2 operating systems and brings thecostof
memory expansion for the Amiga in line with the cost of memory for other
computers."
Alegra is the Amiga :u Memory Expansion Unit from Access
Associates available in 512k (upgradeable to 2MB) and
2MB versions. With a %" foot-print, Alegra is the
smallest expansion package available anywhere!
■ Greg Riker, Electronic Arts, Manager of
Technology:
"We use Alegra and have put units in the hands
of all our developers so they can develop programs
using external memory. We picked Alegra because
it was problem-free, and will be using it for all
future development on the Amiga."
Approved by the F.C.C. for Class B operation,
Alegra conforms to the Commodore/Amiga Ex-
pansion Specification and works with all popular
software.
■ Larry Stoddard, Micro-Systems Software,
President:
"You can quote me all over the place. They're good
cards. Alegra makes and allows Online, Analyze,
Organize, and BBS PC to be more effective. We heat our
Alegras to death. One of them is in use 24 hours a day and
not even a glitch."
Economically priced and highly reliable, Alegra has no
wait-states, so your Amiga operates at its intended speed.
■ Bruce Webster, Byte, Consulting Editor:
". . . it's worth the price for the added power. ! know that I'm
hooked."
Available at your quality Amiga dealer.
| ACCESS ASSOCIATES
491 Aldo Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95054-2303 (408) 727-8520 FAX 408-727-0792
Circle 54 on Reader Service card.
- Ar^ga is a iraoemarv of Consrodwe-Amqa \nz
^ egra ■■•. » iraaema'k of Acc*4S Asso^jtps
customer support. Don't worry if you're not
an accountant or techie, the manual's ap-
pendices include a succinct dictionary of
business and accounting terms plus descrip-
tions of data-entrv keys and program
gadgets.
System startup is easv. Copy the unpro-
tected program disk and follow the instruc-
tions for a machine with one floppy, two
floppies or one or two floppies and a hard
drive. There are even directions for con-
verting the system to different hardware
configurations.
The first screen you'll see is a flowchart
depicting the system modules and their in-
terrelationships. Throughout the modules
there are commonalities. Gadgets include
line/item delete or insert, advance to next,
prior, first or last record in a database and
jump to the first or last line of a report.
The UNDO button could be more ubiqui-
tous; it would certainly' be useful when es-
tablishing payment terms or setting up
product groups in the Inventory module.
Numeric FIND and alphabetic SEARCH
buttons are also included. Conspicuous, but
not missed by their absence, are online
Help screens.
Where Does the Money Go?
The General Ledger is considered the heart
of a company's financial system. The de-
fault Chart of Accounts provides a good
foundation for building your own. To make
it easier for you to create reports and spec-
ify ranges, related accounts are grouped to-
gether in numeric ranges; assets runs in the
1000 series, income runs in the 4000s.
Each of the five major categories — assets,
liabilities, capital, expenses and income — is
identified by its normal default balance, ei-
ther debit or credit. This is important for
non-accounting types, especially since
B.E.S.T. is not a one-write system where you
place one entry and the system automati-
cally posts its opposite. The program re-
quires you to balance debit and credit
entries and will not accept unbalanced
transactions.
Moving from one journal to another to
make adjustments is a matter of pointing
and clicking. The list is comprehensive, gen-
eral, sales, purchases, cash receipts and cash
disbursements (Accounts Payable). They
work in like fashion so if you know one you
know them all. Postings and closings
(monthly and annual) are well structured.
Make a pre-activitv backup of your data,
then proceed via menu option.
Except for unique categories, such as cre-
ating the customer database, payment terms
and statement messages, Accounts Receiva-
ble operates similarly. Working from a data-
base of customer information you can
create charges, note payments, set account
limits and check on the status of accounts.
Accounts Receivable also handles interest,
taxes and delinquent assessments.
You can define up to nine unique pay-
ment terms for the system and assign cus-
tomer defaults that can be overridden when
invoicing. Discount percentage, discount
days, net days, late fee percentage and a de-
scriptive field make up the entire process.
For past due accounts, the system permits
four sets of messages on monthly state-
ments for the ranges: one to 30 days, 31 to
60, 61 to 90 and 91 plus. The customer rec-
ord is a bit cramped, providing only three
lines for a name, company name and
address.
On the processing side, for accounts with
the balance forwarded, aging is simply a
matter of selecting a menu option. Open in-
voice accounts are automatically aged by
the system. Some systems costing five times
as much don't handle this dichotomy as
welt. Housekeeping chores such as purging
old records and clearing todate totals are
also menu driven. You'll be pleased with the
available reports.
Accounts Payable is analogous to Ac-
counts Receivable, except for the direction
of the monetary flow. Accounts Payable has
a vendor database, but otherwise the like-
nesses are numerous — aging reports, ac-
count summary reports, housekeeping
chores, payment terms and mailing labels.
Stocking the Electronic Shelves
Some businesses carry merchandise, hence
they need to know how much they have,
how much it costs, who supplied it, how
much it sells for and how well it has been
selling. Inventory Control handles all the
details. You can define an item master data-
base that stores information about goods
and product groups (electronics, house-
wares, etc.). The only shortfalls in the item
database are the lack of alternate vendor
and substitute item fields, which make pur-
chasing easier and sales more lucrative. Of
course, you can get around this through
creative product grouping and item
numbering.
Service Control tracks service calls (re-
pairmen), hours expended (professional ser-
vices) and pricing. Services and service
groups are entered just as goods are in In-
ventory Control.
Pay Up
Purchase Orders are done in two parts; the
first records supplier and ship-to informa-
tion along with payment, terms and tax
info. A separate screen permits item entry
by part number, description, cost and quan-
tity. The system automatically updates total
cost as other factors are changed. Once-
placed, Purchase Orders are posted to de-
note an item's on-order quantity and status.
The Receiving module has two functions:
Receive Invoices and Receive Bills. The for-
mer takes information from goods received,
notifies inventory of their arrival and tells
Accounts Payable that a bill is due.
For paving those bills. Check Writer
makes it easy to create, edit, print and then
post check transactions. Checks may be en-
tered in advance of their due date, edited
to reflect payment changes and then output
at will. Users can elect, on an individual
check basis, whether or not the check is to
affect General Ledger balances. The system
is flexible enough to handle payments for
goods purchased with or without invoices
and purchase orders. It can also handle
C.O.D. shipments and other unexpected
payment needs. When outpuning hardcopy
you can specify a range of checks to limit
the number actually run, so other advance
checks are left within the system.
Invoicing and Order Processing are inse-
parable. A customer database is maintained
(the same one as in Accounts Receivable);
orders are placed against this record and
your item master. The order processing
screens look and act like the screens used to
place a purchase order. Until orders are ac-
tually updated they are just memos on the
system, not affecting Accounts Receivable
or Inventory Control. Once updated the sys-
tem will reflect the new unit and dollar
balances.
On the invoicing side, hardcopv is output
via two ranges, invoice number and cus-
tomer number. When printed, invoices are ►
72 July/August 1 987
We wish we could offer you a .
RffROllSROTCL
with every order, but we can offer the impeccable value, prompt responsiveness and first-rate service of a legendary company.
ENTERTAINMENT:
Aegis Development
Arazok s Tomb S35.00
Bethesda Softworks
Gridiron $39.00
Datasoft
Alternate Reality S29.00
Electronic Arts
Auto Duel S35.00
Bard's Tale $35.00
Ultima IV $39.00
Jagware
Alien Fires S29.00
Micro-Illusions
Faery Tale Adventure S35.00
Micro Prose
Silent Service S29.00
Mindscape
King of Chicago S35.00
SDI S35.00
Uninvited $35.00
Siibbgic
Flight Simulator II S35.00
Fit. Sim. Scenery Disk #7 . . S19.00
Jet S35.00
BUSINESS/FINANCIAL:
Best, Inc.
Best Business Mgmt CALL
Digital Solutions
LPD Filer S89.00
LPD Planner $89.00
LPD Writer $89.00
Equal Plus
Financial Plus $199.00
Micro Systems Software
Analyze! 2.0 $109.00
Oxxi/Maxisoft
Maxiplan Plus $149.00
Progressive Peripherals
Superbase Personal $99.00
VizaWrite $99.00
Softwood Company
Softwood File II SG S89.00
Softwood Ledger $69.00
Taurus/lmpex
Acquisilion $209.00
The Other Guys
Reason $299.00
Word Perfect Corp.
Word Perfect $299.00
GRAPHICS/VIDEO APPLICATIONS:
Aegis Development
Animator (w/lmages) $89 00
Draw Plus (CAD) $159.00
Impact $69.00
Electronic Arts
Deluxe Paint II $89.00
Deluxe Video 1.2 $89.00
JDK Images
Pro Video CGI $149.00
Micro Illusions
Dynamic CAD CALL
New Tek
Digi View $149.00
Zuma Group
TV Text $69.00
MUSIC APPLICATIONS:
Aegis Development
Sonix S54.00
Electronic Arts
Deluxe Music $69.00
Instant Music $35.00
Mimetics
Pro Midi Studio (V1.4) $125.00
Audio Digitizer S85.00
Midi Interfaces
Midi Gold $69.00
E.C.E. Midi $49.00
PRODUCTIVITY/PUBLISHING:
Brown-Wagh
Publisher 1000 $149.00
Zuma Fonts 1, 2, or 3 $24.00
Gold Disk
Gold Spell $35.00
LaserScript $35.00
Pagesetter $109.00
Inter/ Active
Calligrapher S69.00
Sunrize
City Desk S109.00
UTILITIES:
Discovery Software
Grobbil! (w/Anytime!) $24.00
Key Genie $35.00
Marauder II $29.00
Metacomco
Shell S49.00
Toolkit $35.00
JhuwScfi
Applications Inc.^f
Look Forward to Futuresoftl
PO. Box 222177 Carmel, CA 93922
Circle 135 on Reader Service card
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES:
Manx
Aztec C Commercial' $349.00
Aztec C 'Developer' $199.00
Lattice
Lattice Cv3.1 $179.00
Lattice C 'Professional' S299.00
Metacomco
Assembler $79.00
Lisp $149.00
Pascal $79.00
TDI Software
Modula 2 'Commercial' . $225.00
Modula 2 'Developer' $119.00
TELECOMMUNICATIONS:
Anchor Automation
Volks Omega 80 (Modem) $149.00
Commodore/Amiga
AmigaTerm $39.00
Amiga 1680 Modem $169.00
Micro Systems
BBS-PC! $65.00
Online! $49.00
HARDWARE/PERIPHERALS:
"We stock a complete line of Hard Drives,
RAM Expansion, Accessories, and more...
Call for info & prices!
"Specials"
Insider (1 Meg) $299.00
Starboard2 w/2Megs $549.00
Supra 20 Meg Hard Drive $849.00
*DS/DD Diskettes (box of 10):
Fuji $19.00
Sony $19.00
'Disk Cases:
Teak 135 $35.00 A
SS-50 $15.00
Joysticks, Books, and more!
Prices may vary. Delivery subject fo produr.1 availability.
Calii orders add 6% soles tax.
„ -sa fcr "'oJ
^<^t-'- *■■::-
ready ro be posted. When posted, the trans-
actions alter General Ledger, Accounts Re-
ceivable, Inventory Control and Service
Control balances.
The Ring of the Register
Retail concerns can make use of a special-
ized order-processing option entitled Point
of Sale. It handles orders in the traditional
retail storefront manner. Invoices, with
sales, tax, discount and related information,
are used to note and control a transaction.
As each invoice is made you have immedi-
ate print capability — ideal for over-the-
counter sales.
For money coming through the mail
rather than over the counter, the B.E.S.T.
system allows you to post payments to indi-
vidual invoices if the remittance advice is
complete. If not, payments will be automati-
cally posted to the oldest (customer) invoice
first. Funds are applied until exhausted,
sometimes resulting in partial payment of
some invoices or resulting in a credit (pay-
ment on account). As in Accounts Payable,
individual transactions can be added to or
omitted from the General Ledger.
Boy, is this system complete. Instead of
forcing you to adjust journals through re-
verse entries to accommodate returned
goods, the system automatically adjusts
through menu options. Both cash and
credit sales returns arc handled — almost the
same way as placing an order. Both inven-
tory and sendees can be adjusted through
their own submenus. The key to this ap-
proach is that the proper sales, Accounts
Receivable and General Ledger accounts are
updated as the entry is processed. On the
flip side, there is adequate provision for re-
turn of purchased goods.
The Bottom Line
You can get around a wide variety of appar-
ent obstacles in this application with some
ingenuity. For instance, B.E.S.T. provides for
only one tax rate, making the system diffi-
cult to use in areas where the city, county
and state all take a share of a sale. But, by
properly designating service groups accord-
ing to different tax rates you can circum-
vent the problem. Also, the program only
handles one company or company division,
so if you have to track subsidiaries or re-
lated firms you'll need multiple systems.
However, the software is targeted for
small businesses, not multinational
conglomerates.
The B.E.S.T. Business Management system
is an excellent piece of Amiga business soft-
ware. It is as thoroughly designed and exe-
cuted as their other products. When I close
my books for Fiscal Year 1986, I plan to
move the records into B.E.S.T.
B.E.S.T. Business Management
B.E.S.T. Inc.
PO Box 230519
Tigard, OR 97223
800/368-BEST
S395
512K required.
Musical Accessories
What do a box of chocolates
and the Amiga have
in common?
By Peggy Herrington
Remember Whitman's Samplers, those
yellow boxes of assorted chocolates? That's
how I think of a disk of sampled sounds,
filled with tasty chunks of good things. All
the music composition programs reviewed
here use sampled sounds as instrumental
voices, digitized recordings of audible real-
world events. Samples can be used as sound
effects, too, since you can digitize anything
audible and play it back over a single
Amiga sound channel. Although you can
record your own samples, it isn't easy. Get-
ting good samples requires decent audio
equipment and a fair amount of knowledge
and editing skill, not to mention luck. Most
electronic musicians and programmers buy
libraries of them on disk.
But how do you choose from the sym-
phony of samples available? I tested the fol-
lowing selection of disks, almost 500
individual sounds, with DeluxeMusic Con-
struction Set, Instant Music, Sonix and
SoundScape, and used many of the sound
effects in DeluxeVideo. Incompatibilities
were few. Most were attributable to file-
naming conventions (correctable by re-
naming them) and size limitations within
Instant Music. Many samples cover only an
octave or two in range, and some play an
octave lower than they were recorded, both
of which can throw off the characteristic
sound of an instrument when adjusted.
They will play, but if aural accuracy is a
consideration, contact the developer about
using their samples with a specific music
program before you buy. None of the disks
are copy-protected, but all of the sounds
themselves are copyrighted and may not be
distributed without permission.
Sampling the Samples
I.M. Instruments is an assortment of 31
acoustic music-makers: six guitars, three
drums, 19 various winds, strings and bells
and three sound effects. Most cover six oc-
taves and are of good quality. There's a nice
harp glissando, but the loop point is audi-
ble in a few, notably OrganChord. Sounds
are arranged in directories and each has an
icon; many are IFF translations of sounds
from an early Amiga dealer demo disk,
Overall, this is a handy collection and
it's certainly a nice alternative to instru-
ments provided with the composition
programs.
Sound Advice samples by Waveform
Technologies are in file formats tailored for
specific music programs. If you don't match
music programs and samples, they won't
work. Those for SoundScape, for example,
will crash DeluxeMusic, although you can
resave them in IFF format. Waveform offers
over 30 samples per disk, even including
synthesized sounds for Music Studio. A
number of samples use ring modulation
(temple blocks, bells, xylophone, etc.) and
most make very interesting instruments, en-
hanced so thoroughly that I doubt they
bear much resemblance to the original.
Nice, fat sounds here.
E.C.T. SampleWare's collections are avail-
able in either IFF or Mimetics' file-format.
The 17 samples on the Orchestral disk, like
the others, are done exceedingly well. Or-
chestral Hit, for example, is a multi-instru-
ment Stravinsky-type chord. Many of the
acoustic instruments are crisp yet subtle: vi-
ola, English horn and tympani, to name a
few. The Rock disk has 18 guitar, electronic
drum and synth sounds. For building really
thick musical textures, the Rock disk offers
major and minor chords using only one
sound channel each. The Grab Bag disk has
26 wild and crazy samples, many of which
were used in the film One Crazy Summer —
they are fun to play both musically and for
effects.
Speaking of sound effects, Karl Denton's
six-disk collection has a whopping 290 files
in compact IFF DeluxeVideo format. They
perform with music composition programs,
too, but while they can relieve tedium, most
of them aren't very appropriate. Cars,
planes, guns, babies, creaks, screams,
groans, whines, crowds, lawnmowers, mix-
ers, water gurgles, splashes, animals, just
about everything you can imagine was faith-
fully recorded. Game and video program- ►
"■} July/August 1987
Finally News
News and Information on Products from Finally Software
By fin of* tf 3V -
Hon can I
HU
■ i
111
The Doctor Is In
Shown above, Dr. Xes™ is a
psychotherapeutic game which uses
artificial intelligence techniques and
speech synthesis to converse with you
on topics involving your well being
and mental health. More fun than a
padded cell and great for parties !
Financial
Favorite
Hundreds of people across the
country are using PHASAR: The
Financial Manager™ on their Amiga
computers to organize their finances.
Lauded as the "hands down favorite"
by AmigaWorld, this program is
helping people worldwide, and has
rapidly become the leader in financial
programs for the Amiga. It lets you
sort out your finances by providing
accurate tracking of multiple accounts;
cash, credit, savings, payroll,
deductions, medical expenses,
utilities, etc. It also helps in tax
preparation and prediction. PHASAR
has built in intelligence which
minimizes typing for quicker entry of
information and transactions. It
comes complete with a 100+ page
manual and on-line help which shows
all features and how to use them.
Available now for only $99.95.
Watch for ComicWare™: The audio
animated Comic Book series.
Coming soon from Finally Software.
Graphics For Less
_rinally software just announced the
recent acquisition of B-Graphics™
from Rastaware. Finally will
reintroduce the program as B-Paint™.
This program lets you draw with low,
medium or high resolution on any
Amiga computer. Easy-to-use pull-
down menus give you tools to draw
simple or complex images, and it
reads, stores, and prints IFF files
allowing you to use pictures created
with other standard Amiga drawing
programs as well. Best of all, the
source code is included. At a price of
only $39.95, this represents one of
the best values available for the
Amiga computer.
Motion Commotion
Finally software is proud to
announce AmigaMotion™, the latest
in animation software for the Amiga.
This frame animation software is the
first of its kind. It allows you to use
sources such as B-Paint™, Deluxe
Paint™, or Digiview™ to create
animated sequences. Sequences can
be edited then played back on your
computer or stored to any VCR for
feature length animation. Available
now for only $99.95.
Ft/ay
SOFTWARE
Finally Software
c/o Software Literacy
2255 Ygnacio Valley Rd., Suite N
Walnut Creek, CA 94598
(415) 935-0393
Espanol Made
Easy
Use of Digitized Spanish is a First
The long awaited Spanish tutorial,
Senor Tutor™ is now available. It
comes complete with six -diskettes
chock full of lesson material. Senor
Tutor leads a self-paced beginning
Spanish tutorial using both digitized
Spanish and synthesized English for
high clarity. Senor Tutor comes
equipped with its own Spanish-
English dictionary. Only $69.95.
Wordprocessing AND
Speech in One
■■•!•.. M V*
■ •■■'-' '- tftiti ; <!.!■ M is::**?
■ ■■^J~TTtTH-
John Wagoner, President of Finally
Software, conceded recently that
numerous people are confused about
the purpose of the Talker™ program.
"Many people don't realize that, aside
from having optional speech, Talker
is a full function WYSIWYG (What
You See Is What You Get) word
processor with bold, italic, and
underline shown on-screen. It also
has easy-to-use tab and margin
settings as well as headers, footers
and page numbering, plus more.
Talker is the first word processor to
take full advantage of the Amiga's
special capabilities." Talker costs a
mere $69.96.
Finally Software also offers
Nancy: The Spelling Checker™.
Nancy works with Talker, and other
popular word processors as well as
ASCII files. It has over 120,000
words in its dictionary - the largest
available on the Amiga - and you can
even create your own specialized
dictionaries. Only $49.95.
Senor Tutor, Tallcer, Dr.. Xcs, AiuigaMurirm, GairicWarec, and B-P*inl are trademarks of Finally Software. Deluxe Paint,
Digivie-w, Phasar, Nancy a and Amiga are trademaiks of EJeamnic Ana, NcwTck, Marksman Technology, The Computr
Club, and Commodore- Amiga, respectively.
Circle 51 on Reader Service card.
$95.95
Money Mentor
has a
New Engine
Climb Aboard the new "C" version of
Money Mentor*" (or the ride of your life.
Speed is your ticket to faster data input and
dazzling graphics output. If your destination
is better control of your personal finances,
there's no faster way to get there than with
Money Mentor".
A unique system called "Smart Scrolls"
handles a diversity of tedious data entry
functions and can save 70% of the typing
typically required for entry.
Money Mentor'" features:
• Net Worth Statement
• 200 budget categories.
• 30 integrated accounts: checking, cash,
saving and credit cards.
• Elaborate search routine allows editing
of transactions according to your
specific guidelines.
• Automatic check printing.
• Automatic Account Balancing.
• Colorful graphic reports illustrating
actual versus budgeted amounts.
• Over 50 reports from which to choose.
Let Money Mentor'" put your finances
on the right track... FAST!
SEDONA SOFTWARE
11844 Rancho Benardo Hd; Ste.#20
San Diego, CA 92128
To order,
call (619) 451-0151
Circle 67 on Reader Service card.
mers will be delighted with this extensive
and varied collection.
Pre-recorded SMUSic
Unlike disks of samples that don't do any-
thing by themselves, Symphony Library
disks from Speech Systems stand alone.
Each of the eight volumes (disks) contains
upwards of 100 SMUS-format prerecorded
four-part songs, ranging from classical to
popular. Every disk includes a music player
and some samples for both Amiga inter-
nally and externally MIDI-synthesized
sounds. You can play Amiga and MIDI
sounds separately or together and cycle
through an entire disk.
What's more, SMUSic files will load into
composition programs where you can play,
edit and print them in standard notation.
Speech Systems also has colored MIDI ca-
bles and a MIDI interface with a disk of
nine SMUSic files.
Construction Workers
Dynamics by Bob Shannon is a collection
of files specifically designed for Deluxe-
Music Construction Set. They form a music
composition tutorial and toolkit with more
than 200 rhythm and harmonic patterns
that will help you learn to construct melo-
dies and use tools like cut and paste. All of
the scores provided on the cassette tape
and disk are original, most are previously
unpublished, and a couple are truly fantas-
tic. Learning to read standard music nota-
tion is addressed, but you should be
familiar with it already. Also included are
several MIDI utilities and a light-hearted,
unpretentious manual.
If you want to get a song out of your
heart and into the Amiga — experiment!
With the selection of samples available, you
could transform "Dueling Banjos" into Fe-
rocious Fiddles or even Cacophonious Cats.
Dynamics
Robert Shannon
741 East #305
Woodland, CA 95695
916/662-9591
$29.95
E.C.T. SampIeWare
PO Box 36
Sierra Madre, CA 91024
408/741-0117
$18 per disk, 3 for $40
I.M. Instruments
Actionware
1039 Farmington Ave.
West Hartford, CT 06107
203/2330151
Sii)
Sound Advice Music Software
Wavetable Technologies
1647 Willow Pass Rd., Suite 267
Concord, CA 94520
619/455-7663
$18.50 per disk
Sound Effects
Karl R. Denton Associates
PO Box 56
Westland, MI 48185
313/522-0939
$99.95 for six disks
Symphony Library
Speech Systems
38 West 255 Deerpath Road
Batavia, IL 60510
312/879-6811
$39.95 per disk
DOS-2-DOS
Here's your passport
to the strange and exciting
world of MS DOS.
By R.B. Trelease, Ph.D.
As citizens of a data-processing world
dominated by millions of 8088 (PC/MS
DOS) computers, Amiga users have sought
file and program compatibility with MS
DOS systems. DOS-2-DOS from Central
Coast Software provides convenient, direct
AmigaDOS access to MS DOS media, along
with a number of related useful features.
DOS-2-DOS is a compact (26.5K) program
that must be run from a CLI window. Very
straightforward in its operation, the control
language syntax is similar to other Amiga-
DOS and MS DOS utilities. When DOS-2-
DOS runs, it displays its own prompt
(D2D>) and accepts a number of commands
common to both operating systems. D1R,
for example, provides a directory of files on
the designated disk. CHD1R changes the
current directory/path, and TYPE displays
the ASCII contents of a specified file.
Computer Chameleon
DOS-2DOS provides access to single- and
double-sided, 3|/,-inch and 5/,-inch MS DOS ►
76 July/August 19S7
XEROX
XEROX
Order ffn trr ffrgtcm
■
REVENUE COMPABISONS
. — : — \
*-i — i
! !
laHAPMCb «fL YC A I ION b,
XEROX 4020
1 Color Ink Jet Printer |
□
Seven solid colors
■
Thousands of color
Hudes
D
J«br 13) dotopet
■
2 lo * rninulm pel
cr apnea P>°e
■
40 / 80 cps te*l moriu
a
Five rcskjenl font*
The Xerox 4020 Ink- Jet Printer is making
headlines with unlimited color.
L T
If you want to make headlines with
your next business presentation, try
adding color with the Xerox 4020
Color
Ink-Jet
Printer.
The
f 4020 is a
'high-
^^ quality,
attractively priced printer that mixes
text with brilliant color graphics. It
employs the latest advances in ink-jet
technology to deliver seven distinct
colors which combine to produce over
4,000 different shades.
But the 4020 makes more than just a
colorful impact. It also has a resolution
that few color ink-jet printers can
match, prints 2 to 3 times faster than
comparably priced color printers, and
can be installed by just about anyone in
less than 10 minutes.
Like all Xerox products, the reliable
4020 is backed by one of the best
service and support organizations in
the industry: Team Xerox. To learn
more about the 4020 Color Ink-Jet
Printer, send in the
coupon below or
call 1-800-TEAM-
XPvX,ext.l99A.
We've got a colorful solution to your
business needs.
I I'd like to learn more about the 4020 Color
Ink- Jet Printer and what it can do for my
business presentations.
□ Please send me more information.
D Please have a sales representative contact me.
Send this coupon to: Xerox Corporation.
RO. Box 24. Rochester, NY 14692.
'TeamXerox
Or, if you can't wait, call
1-800-TEAM-XRX, ext. 199A.
|J99A. (1-800-832-6979, ext. t99A.) bm-s-stJ
XEROX* and 4KI) Jt Inukmirt, of XEROX CORPORATION-
FUN!
Computer design
your own
sportswear
in color with
NEW!
PRINT'nWEAR!
Transfer Paper
It's easy to do!
1 Use computer graphics
to create designer
originals on your
monitor.
2 Place New PRINT 'n
WEAR!' V transfer
paper into printer
and print YOUR
original designs
3 Iron transfers onto
Beach/Athletic/
Sweat/T-Shirts, etc
(Using ordinary
hand-iron).
Great to Wear! Great to Give!
NOTE:
• For use with both dot matrix and thermal
ribbon printers.
• Color can be added with crayon it printer
has black ribbon only When ironed, both
crayons and print will transfer in soft
v/ashpmol color.
For Dealer/Distributor information;
FOTO-WEAR' Inc., 62 Herbert Drive.
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["Mail coupon to: FOTO-WEAR! Inc.
P.O. Box 1040, Grand Rapids, MH 55745
Please send pack(s) ol PRINT n WEAR'
at $15.95 each (10 transfer sheets in a pack)
I have enclosed $1.50 for postage and handling
D Payment enclosed (Check or Money Order)
□ Visa Q Mastercard
Cam » .
H
E*e> aate _
. Signaiuie .
L
Diy. Stale. Zip .
:j
78 Julf/August I9S7 Circle 35 on Reader Service card.
diskettes. The program supports both eight-
and nine-sector media. In addition, you can
transfer files between Amiga and Atari ST
3%-inch disks. Version 1.3 of DOS-2-DOS
supports DFO:, which means that single-
drive users can exchange 3J(,-inch foreign-
format files via the Amiga RAM: device.
The familiar COPY command accom-
plishes file transfer. COPY syntax is similar
to that of the AmigaDOS and MS DOS utili-
ties, with the appropriate directory and
paths indicated by / and \ characters, re-
spectively. By default, tranfers are byte-for-
byte, with no character conversions. The -A
extension (e.g., COPY DF1:\UTILITIES\
PCPROG.TXT DF0:RT/PCPROGASC -A)
forces ASCII conversion of files, exchanging
MS DOS CR/LF line terminators for
AmigaDOS LFs and stripping the high-or-
der bit of all characters. Employing -A re-
moves ASCII control characters from text
files, letting you use documents created on
foreign word processers, like WordStar. The
-R extension automatically allows a new
transfer to replace an identically named file
on a destination diskette. By default, DOS-2-
DOS asks you to approve the transfer if it
encounters a pre-existing destination file
with the desired name. As with the princi-
pal operating system utilities, if unspecified,
the destination file's name defaults to the
source file's name.
Wild card file designators (MS DOS *
and ? and AmigaDOS ? and #?) can be used
on the source side of COPY commands. If
DOS-2-DOS is transferring an Amiga file-
name with more than eight characters or
double-extensions to MS DOS, it will ask
you for a different destination name. Files
transferred from MS DOS are stamped with
the current Amiga date and time. Original
AmigaDOS date and time stamps are trans-
ferred to newly created MS DOS copies.
DELETE is comparable to the standard
operating system functions, but it doesn't
support wild cards. Files must be erased in-
dividually by specified filename, although
DELETE commands can assume you're us-
ing the current directory.
FORMAT properly initializes different
types of diskettes, although it does not sup-
port the complete range handled by COPY.
Using a syntax similar to the MS DOS util-
ity, the command can format single- or dou-
ble-sided, double density 5/,-inch MS DOS
disks. No system files are written to the
boot block, so DOS-2-DOS created floppies
are not bootable on a PC system, While you
can initialize 3X.-inch double-sided diskettes
(760K), you cannot use 360K single-sided
media (Transformer format).
HELP or ? displays a DOS-2-DOS screen
summarizing the commands and their ex-
amples. EXIT or K stops the program and
returns to the CLI system prompt.
DOS-2DOS is not copy-protected, and it
is small enough to fit onto all but the most
crowded Workbench 1.2 disks. CLI-based
operation seems to be quite suitable for
most functions, although icon-addicted
users may find something wanting. In addi-
tion to providing mouse-mediated point-
and-click operations, a revised version
might attach icons (.info files) to newly
made AmigaDOS destination files, which
would simplify handling uploaded files.
Furthermore, although Atari ST media sup-
port is quite useful, Macintosh file access
might be eagerly snapped up by a larger
number of Amiga users. While DOS-2-DOS
is a very effective tool providing needed MS
DOS media compatibility functions, Central
Coast Software could still consider adding
an item or two to the wish-list for future
enhancements.
DOS-2-DOS
Central Coast Soflware
268 Bowie Drive
Los Osos, CA 93402
805/528-4906
S55
No special requirements.
Marauder II
A quick and easy way
to fill your vault
with backup disks.
Let's get the disclaimers out of the way
up front: I don't like copy protection; it
gets in my way and I work around it when I
can. On the other hand, I vehemently ob-
ject to people who cut into the sales of le-
gitimate software developers by illegally
selling or giving away copyrighted software.
These positions are not irreconcilable: To
make copies of software I own for legiti-
mate backup purposes is a right given me
(and you) by the U.S. Congress. To copy
software for other purposes is a violation of
federal law. Marauder II from Discovery
Software lets you make copies of copy-
righted Amiga software. Everyone knows
that Marauder II (and programs like it) will
be used by some people to make illegal cop-
ies of software. I condemn that practice, but
I don't condemn the tool used to do it. Ma- W
AVAILABLE NOW!
StaiBoaitO
If you've owned your
Amiga® for a while now, you
know you definitely need
more than 512k of memory.
You probably need at least
double that amount... but you
might need as much as an
additional two megabytes.
We want to urge you to use
StarBoard2 as the solution
to your memory expansion
problem -and to some of
your other Amiga-expansion
needs as well!
Ifs small, but it's BIG-
Since most of you want to expand your
Amiga's memory without having to also
expand your computer table, we designed
StarBoard2 and its two optional
"daughterboards" to fit into a sleek,
unobtrusive Amiga-styled case that snugly
fastens to your computer with two precision-
machined jackscrews.
The .sculpted steel case of StarBoard2
measures only 1.6" wide by 4.3" high by
1 0.2" long. You can access the inside of the
case by removing just two small screws on the
bottom and pulling it apart. We make
StarBoard2 easy to get into so that you or
your dealer can expand it by installing up to
one megabyte of RAM on the standard
StarBoard2 or up to two megabytes by
adding in an Upper Deck.
This card has decks!
The basic StarBoard2 starts out as a one
megabyte memory space with Ok, 512k. or
one megabyte installed. If you add in an
optional Upper Deck (which plugs onto the
Main Board inside the case) you bring
StarBoard2 up to its full two megabyte
potential. You can buy your StarBoard2
with the Upper Deck (populated or
unpopulated) or buy the Upper Deck later as
your need for memory grows.
And you can add other functions to
StarBoard2 by plugging in its second
optional deck -the Multifunction Module!
StarBoard2:functionsfive!
If we count Fast Memory as one function,
the addition of the MultiFunction Module
brings the total up to five!
THE CLOCK FUNCTION:
Whenever you boot your Amiga you have
to tell it what time it is! Add a MultiFunction
Module to your StarBoard2 and you can
hand that tedious task to the battery-backed,
Auto-Configuring
Fast RAM
Zero Wait States
User Expandable
from512kto
2 Megabytes
Bus Pass- Through
MultiFunction
Option: battery/
clock, FPU,
parity, Sticky- Disk
real-time clock/calendar. A small piece of
MicroBotics software in your WorkBench
Startup-Sequence reads the clock and
automatically sets the time and date in your
Amiga. And the battery is included (we
designed it to use an inexpensive, standard
AAA battery which will last at least two
years before needing replacement).
THE FLOATING POINT FUNCTION:
If any one aspect most characterizes the
Amiga it's fast graphics! Most graphic
routines make heavy use of the Amiga
Floating Point Library. Replacing this library
with the one we give you with your
MultiFunction Module and installing a
separately purchased Motorola 6888 1 FPU
chip in the socket provided by the Module
will speed up these math operations from 5 to
40 times! And if you write your own software,
you can directly address this chip for
increased speed in integer arithmetic
operations in addition to floating point math.
THE PARITY CHECKING FUNCTION:
If you install an additional ninth RAM
chip for every eight in your StarBoard2,
then you can enable parity checking. Parity
checking will alert you (with a bus-error
message) in the event of any data corruption
in StarBoard2's memory space. So what
good is it to know that your data's messed up
if the hardware can't fix it for you? It will
warn you against saving that data to disk and
possibly destroying your database or your
massive spreadsheet. The more memory you
have in your system the more likely it is,
statistically, that random errors will occur.
Parity checking gives you some protection
from this threat to your data residing in Fast
RAM. Note that the Amiga's "chip" RAM
cannot be parity checked.
THE IMMORTAL MEMORY DISK
FUNCTION (STICKY-DISK):
When you've got a lot of RAM, you can
make nice big RAM-Disks and speed up your
Amiga's operations a lot! But there's one bad
thing about RAM-Disks: they go away when
you re-boot your machine. Sticky-Disk solves
that problem for you. It turns all of the
memory space inside a single StarBoard2
AMIGA is a registered trademark ol Commodore-Amiga
MicroBotics ,l nc.
81 1 Alpha Drive, Suite 335, Richardson, Texas 75081 / (214) 437-5330
into a Memory Disk that will survive a
warm-reboot! When your Amiga attempts to
grab a StarBoard2 in Sticky-Disk mode, a
hardware signal prevents the system from
acquiring the StarBoard2 as FastRAM (and
thereby erasing your files) -instead it is re-
recognized as a Memory Disk and its contents
are preserved intact. If you want to work
rapidly with large files of data that are being
constantly updated (such as when developing
software) you can appreciate the Sticky-Disk!
Fast RAM -no waiting!
StarBoard2 is a totally engineered
product. It is a ZERO WAIT-STATE design,
auto-configuring under AmigaDOS 1.2 as
Fast RAM. Since AmigaDOS 1.1 doesn't
support autoconfiguration, we also give you
the software to configure memory in 1.1.
Any applications software which "looks"
for Fast RAM will "find" StarBoard2. And
you'll find that your applications run more
efficiently due to StarBoard2 on the bus.
A passing bus? Indeed !
What good is an Expansion Bus if it hits a
dead end, as with some memory cards? Not
much, we think -that's why we carefully and
compatibly passed through the bus so you
could attach other devices onto your Amiga
(including another StarBoard2, of course!).
The sum of the parts...
A really nice feature of the StarBoard2
system is that you can buy exactly what you
need now without closing off your options for
future exapansion. You can even buy a Ok
StarBoard2 (with a one megabyte capacity)
and populate it with your own RAM
(commonly available 256k by 1 by 150ns
memory chips). When you add StarBoard2
to your Amiga you have a powerful hardware
combination, superior to any single-user
micro on the market. See your Authorized
Amiga Dealer today and ask for StarBoard2
SUGGESTED RETAIL PRICING:
StarBoard2. 0k (1 meg space):
StarBoard2. 0k (2 meg space):
StarBoard2, 512k (1 meg space):
StarBoard2, 1 meg(l meg space)
StarBoard2. 2 megs installed:
StarBoard2. 2 megs & MultiFunction:
Upper Deck, 0k (1 meg space):
MultiFunction Module:
also available:
Standard 256k memory card:
MAS-Drive20. 20 meg harddisk:
MouseTime. mouseport clock:
$349
$395
S495
S595
$879
$959
$ 99
$ 99
$129
$1495
$ 50
Circle 103 on Reader Service card.
JUMPDISK:
The Original
Disk Magazine
For the Amiga
JUMPDISK is one year old. Come to our party.
The July anniversary issue has 10 ORIGINAL
programs and 10 new articles.
Call (916} 343-7658, say 58.50 is on the way,
and we'll mail your issue TODAY.
Or send 58.50 check or money order to
JCIMPDISK, 1493 Mt View Ave.. Chico. CA
95926. We ship day received.
If you don't Hke JUMPDISK, we'll buy it back. If
you do like it. consider subscribing for as little
as 55 a monthly issue.
Doubtful? Circle our Reader Service Card
number in this magazine, and we'll send you
our shameless emotional pitch (babies needing
shoes and so forth.)
Ivftet/ieryou try JUMPDISK or not, we'll "sell"
you PD disks for $3 each. No catch. We just
want your attention. SASE gets list. Order
shipped day received.
Programmers and writers: We pay.
Retailers: Sell-through 94%. Get in touch.
An iiu- 1 is .i [fcjisTL-fed 1M k-inarkol ComrrtOdOnS ''•:"> >; i.
Inc. {Hi Mom, we're No. I )
Circle 188 on Reader Service card.
AMIGA OUTLET
3V Disks (DS.DD) -SPECTRUM"- by Mercory Media 10/19.95
3lj" Disks (OS,DD)-PLAIN LABEL® 10/517.95 25/542.25
3k" Disks (SS.DD)-PLAIN LABEL" 1 10/516. SO 25/S37.S0
3k' DISK LABELS - T/F-F/F (bulk 1000/540.00) 100/S8.95
3k" Disk flip top file - Holds 40t disks 511.55
SV Disks (SS.DD) -PLAIN LABEL% 10/S6.40 25/513.25
5V Disks [DO, DD)-PLA]N LABEL® 10/57.50 25/515.00
5k' Disk flip top file ■ Holds 60 disks 511.95
MARAUDER II Most. povrertul 1 copier lor AMIGA $36.95
DIABLO - Graphic mind challenge game 529.95
Gridiron! • Realistic football program S69.95
DEALER IHQUIR1ES INVITED
'AmigateJ System Covers - W/mouse/LUM) 521.95
Amiga® Disk Cover - 1010 or 1020 with LOGO 57.99
Paper T/F-F/F White, 3% x 11, 201b. 1000/517.95
Paper T/F-F/F k" Greenbar.gSj x II .181b 1O00/S17.99
Index Cards - T/F-F/F, 3 x 5 500/57.95
Rolodex Cards - T/F-F/F, 2 1/6x4 500/SB.95
Labels ■ T/F-F/F. Address 1000/55.95
SMi-52.50 US
S1H-S4.50 CN Visa
US S's only Master
U.K. RUTH CO.. AMW77
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[605) 667-2526
He stock what we sell, tor rast delivery.
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AUG of SJf 68001 - Members - Just give us your membership
number and deduct 10» off of all purchases.
ATTENTION PROGRAMMERS - Let us take over the headaches of
publishing your software. He are looking for all items
related to the "AMIGA3".
W16»(S)
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rauder II is an excellent utility; one I re-
commend to anyone who likes the security
of backing up their programs.
Marauder II is the easiest copy utility I've
encountered for any computer system.
When you run the program, you encounter
Marauder II's own copy protection: You're
asked to enter a word from a specified page
and line in your manual. Enter the correct
word and the program continues, otherwise
the program stops. The idea here is to
make the program easily copyable by legiti-
mate owners and to deter illegal distribu-
tion by forcing people to go to the trouble
of copying the manual as well.
The main Marauder II screen pictures an
Amiga 1000 and three external Amiga
drives. Above the drives are two lines of
boxes; the upper one marked "Source" and
the lower one, "Target." By clicking on
these boxes, you designate where you will
place the disk you're copying and the
disk(s) you're copying to. Marauder II lets
you make up to four copies of a disk at a
time (providing you have four floppy drives
attached to your Amiga and want to swap
the source and destination disks). Most peo-
ple, having two disk drives, will place the
source disk in one drive, the destination
disk in the other, and avoid swapping by
making one copy at a time. You can also
designate source and destination disks by
inserting and removing disk icons from the
pictures of the drives. Drive selection is
done against a scrolling rainbow of colors
on an overscan screen — a nice touch.
Doing the Dirty Work
Once you've designated your drives, you
press the start button to begin copying. If
the program you're copying is listed in the
Backup List found on the Marauder II disk,
it will be copied easily. If it doesn't appear,
it may be copied anyway. Discovery Soft-
ware constantly updates its backup list and
makes it available to registered owners via
disk updates and a special modem line.
When copying, messages appear in the
screen of the Amiga telling you what is
going on. If the program detects a non-DOS
track on the disk, as it invariably will when
copying copy-protected software, it will give
you a message when copying is complete
that the destination disk may be corrupted.
The message may be over-caution on the
developer's part. When I got this message,
the copies were invariably good.
Marauder II has four options available
from a menu. Index Sync tells the program
to align the starting point of each track
with the index hole of the source diskette.
This slows down the copy process, but it
may be needed by some software. The veri-
fication option has the program verify that
what is written to a disk is what it read
from the source. You can also choose be-
tween Analytical and Verbatim copy modes.
Since Discovery Software recommends you
always use Analytical mode, I don't know
why they included the Verbatim mode. The
final menu option lets you perform a speed
check on any of your drives. If your drive
speed falls outside of a specified range, you
may need to have the drive adjusted.
Software Striptease
Also on the Marauder II disk are some in-
teresting utilities. ReflectorS lets you copy
The Mirror, another disk copying program
and Marauder II's main commercial com-
petitor. Decoder strips the copy protection
from some popular programs so you can
move them to a hard disk. Decoder only
works with about a half-dozen programs —
all from Electronic Arts — that require spe-
cial treatment to strip away copy protec
tion. More programs aren't included with
Decoder because of one of the more impor-
tant features of Marauder II; it automati-
cally modifies many of the programs it
copies so that the programs can subse-
quently be copied with the AmigaDOS Disk-
copy command. Although this feature of
the program isn't mentioned in the manual
(it gets a mention in a ReadMe file), it is of
great importance to people who want to
move programs to hard disks for greater
convenience. My only problem with this fea-
ture is that some of the programs that Ma-
rauder II deprotects are games. I have no
quarrel with a program that deprotects pro-
ductivity and business software, but I think
deprotecting games is unneccessay and may-
encourage illegal distribution. Other utili-
ties on the disk are DiskErr, which checks
disks for unreadable data, and DiskWipe, a
quick and dirty tool for erasing disk.
For a package that does so much. Ma-
rauder II is remarkably easy to use. The
ready availabilty of upgrades serves to keep
the program current with trends in copy
protection. Marauder II is an excellent util-
ity at a bargain price.
— B. Ryan
Marauder II
Discovery Software International
903 East Willow^ Grove Avenue
Wyndmoor, PA 19118
215/242-4666
S39.95
512K required. >■
SO July/August 1987 Circle 48 on Reader Service card.
SIDECAR.
NOW
.AVAIL
1080MON.... s 275
1080(Refurb)... S 260
GENLOCK..
1 680 Modem .
. $ 225
$ 150
1000R
$CALL
s 649 95
$49995-
Factory Refurbished — Full 90 Day Warranty
1010 DRIVE ... s 200
256K RAM.... S 80
2 MEG MOO
20 MEG s 800
1 MEG WITH
(INTERNAL) S 280 CLOCK
MARAUDER II.. .. s 24
AC/Basic
AC/Fortran
Slli
SI 60
Jg-*CC£S5
Leader Board S 30
Tournament Disk. . . S 1 20
Tenth Frame S 30
ACCOLADE
'.'•■-'; 'c
Famous Courses V 1 2
Borrowed Tune
Cttainp Basketball
Gamemcker
Gamestar Titles
Goll
AcIMIkw
i 27
,., s n
S 30
Call
S 27
GFL Fcolball S 27
Hacker $ 27
Hacker it s 27
Little Comp People S 27
Mindshadow
Music Studio
Shanghai
ToneTown
S 2?
S .36
S 27
S 27
Aieit
Animator/Images S
Ait Disk
Draw
Draw Plus
Images
Impact
Ptodraw
Sonic New
S 25
S 75
SI50
S 24
S 54
SCALL
S 4a
Lisp.. S120
Assembler S 60
Mmdwalker ...% 30
BEST SOFTWARE
Best Financial . , S240
Suma Fonts
1.2 or 34 21
BROWN WAGH
CENTRAL COAST
ALL TITLES AT
LEAST %40 OFF
Digital Link
Gixomos
DELUXE HELP
DIGITAL CREATIONS
S 45
S 30
GRABBIT * S """ A "'7.
Key Genie ...
Marauderll
Adv Const! Kir .'»!■.'* s " *""
Aichon'
5 22
S 36
S 24
S 26
S 26
S 26
S 26
S 3D
S 24
S 26
Deluxe Music
Detune Music 1.2 w/soundscape
Deiuie Pami
S 60
S 60
S 78
S 60
S 60
S 78
DPamt Dala DiskS
S 30
S 35
S 42
S 90
S120
S 30
S 12
S 24
S 24
S 24
S 24
Starlleet 1
S 30
Ultima III
Winnie me Pooh
World Games
Wintet Games
Pawn
Page Settei . . .
ma
UXJi
111**
S 36
S 24
$ 24
S 24
S 27
S 93
All Titles Availa&lE
NEW TITLES
ARRIVING DAILY
JOK IMAGES
PioV.deoCGI SI20
JHM
Talking Color Book S 20
m
C Compiler Lattice s g0
MARKSMAN
PrIASAR S 54
MANX
Aztec C-OevH S180
METACOMCO
Shell , .... S 48
Toolkit S 30
MICRO ILLUSIONS
Disco»ery-Ma1h S 24
Discovery-Spell S 21
F-.5 Strike Ea S le Mfcr0t,rDSe 5 24
Silent Service S 24
MICROSMITHS
T.Ed S 24
MINDSCAPE
Balance of Power S 30
b'ratacus S 30
DeiaVu S 30
Halley Protect S 30
Keyboard Kaatt S 30
Masterlype S 24
Racier S 30
SAT pieperalion S 54
Del ol the Clown S 30
S.D.I S 30
Sinbad 5 30
MICROSYSTEMS SW
Analy!e2 S 90
BBS PC S 60
Online S 42
ScrittHe. ... i'i!
Organne S 60
MIMETICS
Pio Mbi Studio S
Sound Sampler S
SoundScape S 90
PRECISION SOFTWARE
SupeiBase S 90
Flight Simulator
Jet. -
LOGIC
S 30
S 30
TRANSTIME Datamat
A 100, 200, 300
TRUE BASIC, INC.
TrueBasic
9 Libraries (eachl
Runtime
Art Gallery I. II
Prmtmaster Plus
UNISON WORLD
OBMAr,'
Professional
VERSASOFT
VIPTECHNOLOGY
S 90
S Call
S 90
S 30
S100
S 18
S 36
S 90
S 90
NEW RELEASES
X- Rated Grapnics Library = 15
Prism SJ2
Publisher 1 00 SI 20
Digipainl 2 S 36
Faery Tale Adv S 30
Alien Fiers S 24
Din ......... S 48
S 78
Fhpside S 30
disk lo Bisk S 30
Kamptgruppe S 36
Gumo; 2 S 42
Siargiider S 27
Butcher ...... S 22
Nimbus S 90
City Desk S 90
Galileo .. .. S 60
Le« Check S 26
Piownle 5 75
Word Perfect . S240
Laser Scripl 5 27
Zing Keys S 3D
Surgeon S 36
Earl Weaver Baseball SCALL
Expert System kil S 42
Perlecl sound S 48
Acquisition SI60
Arafoks Tomb ...... S 30
Virfeoscape 3D SI 20
Avatex
1 200
1200HC
V2400HC
sgg95
$11995
S21995
NX10 $180
NX10C .... $180
NL10 $220
v_
NX15 S300
NR15 $600
NB2415 . . . SCall
■w/purcnase ol two ribbons
KICKSTART 1.2 . , . S10 MOUSE PAD $6
0KIMATE 20 .... S180 ALL CABLES S15
Sonix Speakets. . . SCall Roland Plotters . . . SCall
DISK CASE (30| . . . . S8 AB SWITCH S30
Printer Drivers. . . . SCall Digiview Stand . - . , S50
Disk Head Cleaners .... S8 CASIO CZ101 S250
m ds/do [30 lo». . . SI. 30 3'/s DS/DD fugi. , . Si, 00
3V Z DS/DD IName Brand! S1.80
/0 SE S 800-433-7756
CUSTOMER SERVICE 313-427-0267
HOURS IE.S.T.I:
Monday thru Friday - 10:00 A.M. lo 8:00 P.M.
Saturday - 10:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M.
DEALER IN0UIREES INVITED
Mo surcharge lot MOVISA. DISCOVER
Alt leturns musl have RAfl . Merchandise found Celer.Ue will be repaired 01 replaced All items are
flew Wedonot oiler relurdsfot detective products or lor products tnai do no: perform satisfactorily
We make no guarantees foi pioducl peilormance Any money back guarantees musl be handled
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Please call lor snipping & handling charges Sony no walk in sales Prices subject to change
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Circle 44 on Reader Service card-
Game Shorties
Hacker
You're not supposed to be here. You
don't know what's going on. You don't
know what you're doing. Somehow, you
managed to log onto the system, and vou're
stumbling deeper into a clandestine opera-
tion. Is it some kind of sinister plot? A con-
spiracy? You're not sure, but it seems to be
of international proportions.
Hacker is an illustrated adventure that
gives you the chance to break into someone
else's computer system without facing the
legal consequences. The manual tells you
how to load the disk — that's it. You're on
your own. You're a hacker breaking into a
computer system.
After logging on, you find that you've
gained access to the system of a company
called Magma. Ltd. You don't know who
they are or what the confidential Magma
Project is all about, but they seem to be up
to no good. The system instructs you to
travel around the globe and negotiate with
spies to obtain the pieces of a shredded
document that, maybe, will help you to un-
ravel the mystery.
One of Hacker's strong points is that
there are no complicated rules to remem-
ber; in fact, there are no rules at all. Your
logic and common sense are all you have to
get vou from one point to tin- next. Also,
Hacker overcomes one of the problems that
plagues many adventure games: You don't
have to struggle with rules of syntax and a
limited dictionary to interact with the
program.
If you enjoy adventures, mysteries, puz-
zles and brainteasers, then you should like
Hacker. But be prepared for frustration. . .
and failure. This game's not easy to fathom.
If you get hopelessly stuck, Activision will
send you a set of Hacker Hints. ($44.95, Ac-
tivision, Inc., 2350 Bayshore Frontage Road,
Mountain View, CA 94043, 415/960-0410. Xo
special requirements.)
—$. Laftamme
Shanghai
Shanghai is a "table" game based upon
the Chinese game Mah Jongg. The Amiga
randomly sets up titles in an arrangement
called the dragon. The tiles are chosen as
pairs and removed from the board. Tiles
must be in the proper locations to be re-
movable. An ancient Chinese "surprise"
awaits those who clear the board.
The game can be played by one, in teams
or by two in a timed competition. Though
playing in competition forces you to think
fast, the most pleasure of this game, 1 think,
comes from playing it alone. It is absorbing,
addictive and hasn't bored me yet. The
computer makes it easy to play, but not easy
to win. And the graphics have a well drawn
three-dimensional look. The secret, how-
ft
>Xj a \m I
_.'--«__* ti --- A A. .—,4" _.
2
ever, to the excellence of this game does
not come from the computer, but from the
game. It is at once simple and very com-
plex. It has the timeless quality of a great
game in itself. This is the Amiga game I
have played and enjoyed the most. If you
want an excellent strategy game, buy Shang-
hai. ($44.95, Activision, 2350 Bayshore Frontage
Road, Mountain View, CA 94043, 415/960-
0410. 512K required.)
— V. Laughner
Mindwalker
This action-strategy game from Commo-
dore has been around for awhile and is still
one of the best games for the Amiga. It
ranks very high in graphics, sound and
overall concept. You are a mad physics pro-
fessor wandering the recesses of your own
mind, trying to reconstruct your lost sanity.
You have four sides to your "ego": a hu-
man, a wizard, a spriggan (a flying fantasy
creature) and a water nymph. You travel
across the elaborate grid of the Mind, trac-
ing a "path of coherent thought" and bat-
tling Nihilism Beams and your own Bad
Thoughts with powerful charges of electric-
ity. Having plotted the proper course across
the Mind, you take a Tube into the Brain
and battle neurons as you search for Shards
of Sanity. You then enter into the Subcon-
scious where you piece together your lost
sanity. The process gets more and more dif-
ficult as you go along.
This is a very successful joining of superb
graphics, sound, action and story. Though
confusing at times, the game manages to
hold your interest with its character
changes, bizarre sounds and magical effects.
You'll own a real sense of power from zap-
ping things with the bolts of electricity! De-
spite its age, Mindwalker is one of the best
animated adventure games for the Amiga.
($49.95, Commodore Business Machines Inc.,
1200 Wilson Drive, West Ouster, PA 19380,
215/431-9100. Joystick required.)
— V. Laughner
Strip Poker
Strip Poker is a fairly mindless game for
the Amiga that should entertain the desper-
ate or immature for about 20 minutes, de-
pending upon one's luck or poker playing
abilities. If you have no luck at all, then you
might have to play the game for 45 min-
utes. (Of course, if you paid money for this
game, then it is evident that you don't have
much luck to begin with.) You play five card
draw against two rather crudely drawn
women. (Artworx claims there are other
data disks with new female and male oppo-
nents available, but we haven't seen them.)
You and your opponent each start with
S100, and when either of you loses more
than that amount you "borrow" $100 more
in exchange for an article of clothing.
When a player loses all their clothing the
game is mercifully over.
There are only a few things about the
game that are Amiga specific. One, you play
it on an Amiga. Two, when either opponent
loses $100, a digitized female voice says
something cerebral like "gee whiz!" or "oh
darn!" There is a "modesty switch" for
blanking the screen in case Mom walks by.
Strip Poker isn't very erotic. It isn't very
fun to play. The graphics may have been
really swell on a VIC-20, but not on an
Amiga. This program is one that you might
play for an afternoon one day, put it away
and never play it again (until a depraved
friend comes over and pesters you into let-
ting him see it). This program isn't degrad-
ing; it is embarrasingly stupid. Strip Poker
could give computer pornography a bad
name. ($39.95, Artworx Software Company Inc.,
1844 Penfield Rd., Penfield, NY 14526, 800/828-
6573. 512K required.) ■
— G. Wright
82 Juiy/Axtgust 19S7
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Circle 210 on Reads' Service card.
What's New?
The standard mixture — emus, aquariums,
telescopes and black boxes.
In Sync
Desktop video has stepped up
to broadcast quality with the
RM2 Professional Genlock Sub-
system from Burklund Sc Asso-
ciates. Synchronizing
professional video equipment
with Amiga graphics, the RM2
accepts input from a television
camera or any other RS-170A
video source.
Although engineered to be
coupled with a live source, the
RM2 can operate in a master
mode, generating its own RS-
170A synchronization signals.
For flexibility, the unit is de-
signed of plug-in modules for
color decoding, encoding, key-
ing and genlocking functions,
among others.
Front panel controls include
an A-B fader for mixing live
and graphics video, a color bar
generator switch, decoder signal
adjustment knobs and controls
to compensate for varying
lengths of cable between the
Amiga and live sources. The
rear panel houses 22 BNC
connectors.
Inside the 19-inch, rack-
mountable box, TTL circuitry is
encased in thin-film modules in
24-pin metal packages to reduce
time and phase jitter. Attempt-
ing to minimize crosstalk and
eliminate on-screen herring-
bone patterns, Burklund used
microcoaxial cabling among
video leads and circuits.
Burkland is planning to ex-
pand the basic unit, and is al-
ready offering an optional
keyer and a jumper to genlock
Compiled by Linda Barrett
graphics boards for IBM PCs
and compatibles. A Chroma-key
module to allow live video over-
lay of computer graphics and
genlocking of several Amigas at
the same time are currently un-
der development. One BNC out-
put will currently accept a
planned "black burst" output to
produce a pure black signal.
The RM2 retails for $2,500.
Direct your questions to Burk-
lund &• Associates, 3903 Carolyn
Ave., Fairfax, VA 22031, 703/273-
5663.
Star Gazing
Who needs a telescope when
you've got an Amiga? Drawing
on a database of over 1,600
stars, Galileo, from Infinity Soft-
ware, can show the sky from
any point on Earth for any date
in the 20th century. You can
scroll to any part of the sky to
identify constellations, planets
and over 400 deep-sky objects.
The program calculates the
times planets or stars rise and
set and plots their pathways.
You can even view a solar
eclipse without sunglasses.
Selling for S99.95, Galileo is
available from Infinity Software
Ltd., 1331 61st St., Suite
F, Emeryville, CA 94608,
415/420-1551.
Gone Fichin'
Software Visions offers a da-
tabase with a twist. The Micro-
Fiche Filer requires no
programming to set up; instead,
data is organized on microfiche.
To locate your information, sim-
ply drag a "magnifying glass"
over a condensed, two-dimen-
sional sheet of text and pictures
of any size. For a customized
display, you can shrink or
stretch the graphics and refor-
mat the entire microfiche.
The MicroFiche Filer is being
offered for S99. For more infor-
mation, contact Software Vi-
sions Inc., 26 Forest Road,
Framingham, MA 01701. 800/
527-7014 (in MA, 617/877-1266).
Mystery, Missions
And Missiles
As Yogi Berra once said, "It's
like deja vu all over again."
Whether or not he was refer-
ring to Mindscape's new game.
Uninvited, is still under debate.
Employing the same mouse-only
system as the popular adventure
Deja Vu, Uninvited opens with
you crashing your car during a
thunder storm in front of a
house that's straight out of The
Adams Family. Your brother has
disappeared from the wreckage,
leaving you to approach the
house and ask for help alone,
From there things get worse.
In Sinbad and the Throne of
the Falcon, things can't get
much worse. The Caliph was
transformed into a falcon dur-
ing the night, and Sinbad — i.e.,
you — must sail the world to
learn how to save him. Mean-
while. . .back at the palace, the
Black Prince's troops are attack-
ing and you must maneuver the
Caliph's armies to defend the
city. The game is really two in
one: an adventure as you sail
the seven seas searching for
clues, plus a war strategy game
as vou defend the city.
Also new from Cinemaware is
S.D.I., a high-pressure mix of
the arcade and adventure. If
you think the world is in tur-
moil now, vou should see things
in 2017. With the U.S. nearing
completion of S.D.I, the Soviet
Union is having another revolu-
tion. Convinced the Americans
will cripple the Soviets with the
defense system, the revolution-
aries have taken control of So-
viet missile sites and space
ports. Your mission as Captain
Sloan McCormick of the Orbital
Marines is to destroy KGB at-
tack fighters, protect and repair
the S.D.I, system and defend
America from a nuclear attack.
The Soviet government has
pledged their help, in the form
of Commander Natalya Kaza-
rian, your old flame from the
joint Soviet/American mission
to Mars.
Each of the three games re-
tails for $49.95. Contact Mind-
scape, 3444 Dundee Road,
Northbrook, IL 60062,
312/480-7667.
A Duo of Deuces
If your programs are getting
cramped, perhaps it's time to
expand your memory. Progres-
sive Peripherals & Software's
MegaBoard 2 adds two mega-
bytes of fast RAM to the Amiga
1000. Fully populated, the
board auto-configures with 1.2 ►
84 July/August 1987
TRUE BASIC LANGUAGE SYSTEM
Turn your
Amiga
into a
flying machined
Speed, great graphics and
enough built-in power to let
you really fly: that's what you
expect from your Amiga®.
And that's what you get from
programming in True
BASIC.
It's a structured language
that's easy to use. A compiler,
editor and debugging tools
rolled into one. It's the latest
from Kemeny and Kurtz, the
inventors of BASIC.
If you crunch
numbers, you'll
appreciate floating-
point math that's
very fast. Support for
large, dynamic
arrays, and built-in
syntax for matrix
algebra.
And True BASIC
makes graphics even
easier. Define your
own coordinate schemes and
color palettes. Plot entire
arrays with a single
statement. Apply built-in 2D
transforms. Or use the 3D
Graphics Library to put some
depth in the picture.
With the Developer's Toolkit
you can launch sprites and
bobs. Add pull-down menus,
and get at all the Intuition and
Kernal features. But if
portable code is important,
there's True BASIC for the PC,
Macintosh™ and Atari® ST as
well.
As your programs get bigger,
you'll want to build your own
external libraries.
LANGUAGE
COMPILER/DEBUGGER
•multi-line (unctions
• compiles to last, compact
•SELECT CASE, IF/ELSE IF
b-code
■local, global variables
• separately-compiled libraries
■ recursion
• parameter type-checking
■GKS graphics
• set breakpoints and continue
• immediate mode execution
LIMITS
• strings to 1 megabyte each
EDITOR
■ floating-point 5e-309 to 1 .8e+308
• tull-screen, mouse-based editor
• unlimited program size,
• global search, replace
arrays, data
• block copy, move, delete
- names up to 3 1 characters
• menu, function key, command
• auto memory management
line interfaces all supported
But if you're just learning
how to fly, True BASIC will
coach you with on- line
HELP. Friendly error
messages, and a tutorial-
based User's Guide.
Find out why thousands of
engineers, developers, and
students use True BASIC for
their flights of fancy. Visit
your Amiga dealer, or call
us today at 1-800-TRBASIC.
Language System $99.95
Runtime Package $99.95
Developer's Toolkit,
3-D Graphics Library,
Sorting & Searching,
Advanced String Library
$49.95
each
Amiga is a registered trademark of
Commodore-Amiea — Macintosh is licensed
to Apple Computer — Atari is a registered
trademark of Atari Corp — True BASIC Ls a
trademark of True BASIC, Inc.
They can be separately
compiled, in BASIC, C or
assembly. Debug with
breakpoints and immediate
mode. Create keyboard
macros to complement True
BASIC'S fantastic editor.
Msic
39 South Main Street
Hanover, NH 03755
(6031643-3882
inc.
Circle 66 on Reader Service card.
software and plugs into the side
expansion bus; the MegaBoard
2 has a 90-day warranty.
Not to be outdone, Access As-
sociates has upgraded their
512K. Alegra unit to two mega-
bytes. Connecting to the side
bus, the board auto-configures
and consumes less than five
watts of power. The Alegra is
housed in a two-piece case and
is fully warranteed against man-
ufacturing defects.
The MegaBoard 2 sells for
$599.98. The new AlegTa is
S749, $379 for the upgrade.
Contact Progressive Peripherals
& Software at 464 Kalamath St.,
Denver, CO 80204, 303/825-
4144.
Access Associates may be
reached at 491 Aldo Ave., Santa
Clara, CA 95054, 408/727-8520.
Double Talk
Aegis lets you do everything
at once with Digs!, their new
telecommunications program.
With Doubletalk file transfer,
you can send and receive a file
while talking with the other
user. Diga! uses a packet system
to send and receive informa-
tion, and confirms file integrity
after a transmission. With a BA-
SIClike programming language,
you can create automated ses-
sions — Scripts — to capture data,
do branching and add condi-
tionals. You can create custom
terminal emulators, including
the Tektronix 4010. VT100 emu-
lation uses overscan, the 132-col-
umn display and up to 50 lines
of text on screen. For S79.95,
Diga! provides password protec-
tion, Kermit, Xmodem and
batch-file transfer protocols and
10 programmable function keys.
For more details, contact Aegis
Development, 21 15 Pico Blvd.,
Santa Monica, CA 90405,
213/392-9972.
Under Control
RS Data Systems' Phoenix is
not a myth, nor must it con-
sume itself in flames before run-
ning. The Phoenix is a hard-
disk controller for the Amiga
1000 capable of handling up to
four ST506/412 drives, plus a
two-gigabyte laser disk and a
streaming tape backup unit.
The auto-configuring control-
ler's DMA channel with on-
board sector buffers can trans-
fer data at approximately 25
megabits per second, the Amiga
expansion bus limit. DMA trans-
fers from the sector buffer par-
allel transfers from the hard
disk. The Phoenix also supports
three error correction codes.
The Phoenix conies with a
power supply, cables, auto-con-
figure backplane, expansion en-
closure and driver software. You
may purchase it alone or with a
20, 40 or 80 MB MiniScribc
hard disk. The controller alone
retails for S450, with a 20 MB
hard disk, S995. Designs for the
Amiga 500 and 2000 are under
development. Contact RS Data
Systems, 7322 Southwest Fair-
way, Suite 660, Houston, TX
77074, 713/988-5441.
PHASAR Face-Lift
PHASAR: The Financial Man-
ager is now being distributed by
Finally Software. Version 2.3
features an enhanced user inter-
face and sells for $99,95. Con-
tact Finally Software Inc., 4000
MacArthur Blvd., Suite 3000,
Newport Beach, CA 92663.
714/722-2922.
Expanding Inward
Requiring no cuts or solder-
ing. Spirit Technology's three
new memory boards mount in
the Amiga 1000 chassis under
the FCC radiation sheild. The
ST-15 provides an additional 1.5
MB to the standard 512K; the
ST-10 adds one megabyte, while
the ST-5 provides 0.5 MB. All
include a time/calendar with a
battery back-up and leap year
provision. Featuring zero wait-
state, the auto-config boards will
add to any external memory.
The ST-15 lists at $599.50. the
ST-10 at S499.50, and the ST-5
at S349.50. You can purchase
the time/calendar (ST-TC) sepa-
rately for S59.50. To order, con-
tact Spirit Technology, 220 West
2950 South, Salt Lake City, UT
84115, 800/433-7572.
A Sea of Sinewaves
Just when you thought you'd
seen it all, along comes Doug's
Math Aquarium. The program
plots mathematical functions in
wire frame mode with hidden
line removal and in flat contour
mode using color to represent
altitude. Besides all scientific
and transcendental functions
usually included in a computer
language, Doug's Math Aquar-
ium swimmingly handles recur-
sive functions, like the
Mandelbrot set. To minimize
drawing time, expressions are
compiled.
If you're not a math whiz, a
variety of formulas and pictures
already populate the Aquarium.
Those who have taken the
plunge can generate formulas,
or alter those included to study
their behavior. Doug's Math
Aquarium retails for $79 (sea-
weed not included). Contact
Seven Seas Software, PO Box
-111, Port Townsend, WA 98308,
206/385-3771.
Some Assembly
Required
Metacomco, authors of the
original Amiga Assembler, just
outdid themselves with the
Macro Assembler. The en-
hanced assembler provides
macro expansion directives
compatible with Motorola speci-
fications and supports the full
Motorola instruction set. The
system includes a linker, Amiga
libraries and a full-screen edi-
tor. Code is position indepen-
dent or relocatable, while all
listings are page-formatted to
show the instruction line, the
code procluced and the relative
offset address. External refer-
ences allow you to link assem-
bler modules and programs
written in assembler or any
higher-level language. All arith-
metic uses 32-bit values, offering
a wide range of expressions.
Conditional directives are also
included. In case of disaster, er-
ror messages can be written to
the console or flagged in a list-
ing. A 60-page manual is
provided.
Macro Assembler retails for
S99.95. For more details, contact
Metacomco pic, 26 Portland
Square, Bristol, England BS2
8RZ, 011-44-272-428-781.
Computer Classroom
If your children need a sum-
mer refresher course, MicroEd
and The Other Guys have sev-
eral new educational packages.
To its already extensive line,
MicroEd adds Beginning Count-
ing (S39.95, two disks), Making
Our Constitution ($79.95, four
disks). Transcontinental Rail-
road ($39.95) and two volumes
of Learning American English
as a Foreign Language ($89.95,
five disks each). The programs
use the same approach as
MicroEd's previous offerings,
coupling practice question-and-
answer sections, quizzes and
digitized pictures. English as a
Foreign Language concentrates
on listening comprehension
rather than the standard goal of
correct pronunciation. Both the
language programs and Bcgin-
ning Counting usr the Amiga
voice.
The Other Guys' programs
concentrate on learning
through game-play with graph-
ics, speech and music. Match-It
(339.99) teaches basic colors and
shapes. Math-a-Magician
($39.99) covers four skill levels
of addition, subtraction, multi-
plication and division of whole
numbers and fractions. Talking
Storybook ($49.99) will read to a
child using up to 10 voices per
story, or speech can be turned
off, leaving the text for you or
your child to read. Additional
stories (from $24 to $39.99) are
available ranging from history ».
86 July/August 1981
rsj*"
6455
Circle 134 on Reader Service card.
5 Elmwood St.
Worcester, MA 01602
#
Accessories
Jitter Flicker $14
Joystick w/3 Fire Button ... SlO
Disk Holder 45 $22
Disk Holder 90 S30
Modem Cable S17
Teak Wood 120 Cap $35
Teak Wood 60 w/ lock S31
Teak Wood 64 Cap S28
Midi Cable S19
Mouse Pad SI 2
Printer Cable SI 7
A-B Data Switch S65
Business Accounting
B.E.S.T S299
Financial Plus S199
Keep Track General Ledger $85
Miamiga Ledger (Softwood) $63
Nimbus 1 Record Keeper ... $189
Rags to Riches G/L $90
Cinemaware
Defender of the Crown $37
King of Chicago S37
S.D.I $37
Sinbad S37
Communications
BBS PC S65
Digital Link $49
Macro Modem 552
Maxi Comm $37
Online! $46
Copiers
Hacker Package $35
Marauder II S29
Mirror Hacker Package $35
Mirror $35
Quick Nibble $30
Creativity & Product.
Amiga Disk file Organizer . . . $48
Analytic An $42
Art Gallery I $23
Art Gallery II $23
Butcher $29
D'Buddy $49
Fastfont S30
Flipside $44
Gizmoz Enhanced $49
Grabbit S24
Keygeme $35
Print Master Plus S37
The Surgeon $44
TV - Text $70
Zuma Fonts 1 S23
Zuma Fonts II $23
Zuma Fonts III S23
Database Management
Acquisition S 1 99
Datamat A200 SI 99
Datamat A300 $279
DBMAN $99
LPD Filer $99
Omega File $55
Organize! $65
Softwood File II SG $63
Super Base $90
Diskettes
Sony 3.5 DS/DD $23
Fuji Double Sided Disks $22
Maxell MF2 DP $23
Desk Top Publishing
Order Desk Top Organizer . $35
Page Setter $99
Publisher 1000 $145
Educational
Animal Kingdom $35
Decimal Dungeon $35
Discovery Math $29
Discovery Spell $29
Discovery Trivia ,..,.....,,. $29
Dr. Xes $37
First Shapes $34
Fraction Action $35
Kid Talk $35
Kinderama $35
linkword French $25
Linkword German $25
Linkword Italian $25
Linkword Russian $25
Linkword Spanish $25
Match It $27
Math Talk $35
Math A Magician $27
New Tech Clr Book $27
Read & Rhyme $35
Speller Bee $35
Talking Coloring Book ,.., .$25
Winnie The Pooh $21
Entertainment
Alien Fires $35
Archon II S35
Archon $29
Arctic Fox S28
Auto Duel $35
Bard s Tale S35
Borrowed Time $29
Bridge 4.0 S24
Championship Baseball $40
Championship Basketball ...$32
Chess Master 2000 S34
Championship Football $33
Championship Golf $33
Computer Baseball $29
Deep Space $33
De|a-Vu $32
Delta Patrol S20
Diablo 522
Earl Weaver Baseball $37
Faery Tale $35
Famous Courses $17
Financial Time Machine $30
Galileo $69
Grand Slam Tennis S36
Gridiron Football S53
Hacker II $34
Hacker 529
All Infocom S26-S36
King Quest 1 $35
King Quest 2 $35
King Quest 3 $35
Leader Board $30
Little Computer People 535
Marble Madness $35
Mean 18 530
Mind Shadow 529
Mind Walker $37
Monkey Business ........... 520
Ogre $25
One On One 528
The Pawn $30
Quintette 530
Shanghai $29
Skylox 528
Star Fleet I 540
Strip Polker $30
Tass Time Tone Town ...... 529
Temple Aphsai $30
Tenth Frame 530
Tournament Disk 517
Ullima III $44
Uninvited 539
Video Vegas 527
Winter Games S30
World Games 530
Graphics & Video
Animator ; Images 585
Dynamic Cad S325
Digi-Paint 545
Deluxe Paint S49
Deluxe Paint II $99
Dpaint Art Disk $25
Dpamt Art Disk rr2 525
Dprint Art Disk $25
Deluxe Print 569
Aegis Draw Plus si 67
Deluxe Video $69
Images $29
Impact 5125
Prism $47
Seasons & Holidays $25
Video Cataloger 530
Home Management
2-2 Home Mgmnt $65
Financial Cook Book $35
Home Inventory Mgr $30
Money Mentor $65
Phaser Home Accl Sys $69
Hardware
Amiga 256k Expansion $95
3 5 External Drive S220
5.25 External Drive $189
Amiga 1000 512k w/monitor 51 149
Amiga 2000 51495
Alime Plus $49
Avatex 300/1200 $109
WVl410Camara $275
20-Meg SCSI hard Drive-C LTD SS75
Product subject to availability. Prices subject to change.
Shipping Inlo: COD Charge only S3. 00 pel shipping. We ship UP5 Ground. Air, and overnight shipping available. For taster
delivery send Cashier Check, Money order, or use MasterCard of visa. Personal checks allow 20 days to clear. Company
purchase orders accepted. Call for prior authorization. Mass. residents add 5% sales tax.
Amiga Is a trademark of Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
Digi-Vtew S149
Future Sound $139
Genlock $225
Insider 1 Meg $329
Amiga Modem 1680 $175
E.C.E Midi Interface S55
Sidecar call
Skyles 256k Expansion $85
Skyles Midi S49
Starboard 2 (1 Meg Poplld) . S399
Startboard 2 2/Meg Poplld . $535
Starboard Multi Function 579
Tic 549
Xepec Hard Disk Drive $895
Supra Hard Disk ... SB55
Languages & Utility
A/C Basic S149
A/C Fortran 5230
Amiga Assembler $75
Aztec C Commercial 3.4 5320
Aztec C Developer 3.4 S199
Aztec C Professional $150
Cli Mate $24
Cross Assembler $69
Enhancer $14
Lattice C $165
Amiga Lisp $140
Shell $52
System Monitor S37
TDI Modula II Commercial .$199
TDI Modula II Dev. (N.V) ...$105
TDI Modula II STD (N. VI ....$69
True Basic $99
TXED $30
Zing $55
Printers
Okimate 20 Interface $80
Okimate 20 5205
Panasonic KX-1091 1 $225
JX-720 lma|et Printer $1 145
Sound & Music
Deluxe Music $69
Insi-Music Data Disk »i 525
Instant Music 535
Music Studio 545
Pro-Midi Studio Soundscap S134
Son ix 555
Sound Sampler $89
Spreadsheets
Analyze 1 2.0 5100
Logistix Integrate $95
LPD Planner $99
Maxi Plan (New Version) . . . $109
Maxi Plan Plus (N.V) S139
Training
Flight Simulator II 538
Key Board Kadet $30
Master Type 530
Silent Service $30
Super Huey $30
Wordprocessors
Flow. Idea Processor $69
Gold Spell $33
Infomtnder $59
Lexcheck 535
LPD Writer 599
Miamiga Word $66
Prowrile $89
Scribble! 2,0 $65
Viza Write $9,5
Promise $33
Reason ca ||
to fairy tales and classics to
mythology.
Educational for all ages is
Promise ($49.99), a spelling
checker from The Other Guys.
The memory-resident dictionary
contains 95,000 words, plus you
can make custom dictionaries.
Direct your questions to
MicroEd Inc., PO Box 24750,
Edina, MN 55424, 612/929-2242
and The Other Guys, 55 North
Main St., Suite 301-D, PO Box
H, Logan, UT 84321.
Birds of a Computer
Chip . . .
Besides having one of the
most distinctive names in the
software market, Emusoft Corp.
has released the ES-5C Pro-
grammable, Scientific Calcula-
tor. Similar in layout and
function to Hewlett-Packard's
HP-15C, the ES-3C handles loga-
rithmic, trigonometric and hy-
perbolic functions; statistics and
probability, linear regressions.
polar and rectangular coordi-
nates and fixed point, scientific
and engineering notation. No
memory partitioning is needed;
you can store and recall pro-
grams from disk. Fully program-
mable, the color calculator
retails for $19.95. Contact Emu-
soft Corp. at 1400 Chicago Ave.
#303, Evanston. IL 60201, 312/
869-6676.
Video Inkwell
Now you can really make
your text stand out from the
rest. The Calligrapher lets you
design your own fonts sized
from 1 X 1 pixels to 256 X 160
pixels. Each up to 16-color char-
acter can be resized, italicized
up to 45 degrees to the left or
right and underlined. All fonts
conform to the Amiga text and
disk formats, but two or more
color fonts require the included
Font Fixer patch to work with
commercial programs.
Editing features are numer-
ous. You have eight predefined
brushes with a grab function to
create more, all of which can be
spun, flipped and rotated, or
you can load in DeluxePaini
brushes and patterns. You can
magnify the text two to 24 times
then adjust spacing, width, kern-
ing and the baseline. Characters
can be copied, merged to front
or back and replaced.
The package sells for $100, or
you can purchase a demo disk
for So. For all the details, con-
tact Inter/Active Softworks, 57
Post St., Suite 811, San Fran-
cisco, CA 94104, 415/956-2660.
Worse Than Taxes
Infocom's Bureaucracy by
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy) has enough
convoluted logic and obscure
forms and rules to make the
government proud. In this text
adventure, you've just got a new
house, and a new job, which re-
quires you to take an orienta-
tion seminar in Paris. However,
the bank had a problem with
your change of address
form . . . and your check
hasn't arrived. What follows is a
romp through the bowels of
bureaucracy.
The game sells for $39.95.
Contact Infocom at 125 Cam-
bridge Park Drive, Cambridge,
MA 02140, 617/429-6000. (Call
between 10:11 am and 2:22 pm,
unless your name begins with
P-Z, in which case call between
2:22 am and 10:11 pm, except-
ing the hours above, unless you
had Fruit-Loops for breakfast,
in which case . . . .)
Juggler's Newsletter
Due to the popularity of Eric
Graham's Juggler ray-tracing
program (see our May/June '87
cover), the Grahams are starting
a newsletter on ray-tracing tech-
niques. For details, write to:
Cathryn Graham, PO Box 579,
Sandia Park, NM 87047.1
Hors d'oeuvres
Unique applications, lips
and stuff
You may be using your Amiga at work, at home,
or in the back seal of your car, but somehow you'll
be using it in a unique way- You will discover things
that will let you do something (aster, easier or more
elegantly.
AmigaWorld would like to share those shortcuts,
ideas, things to avoid, things to try, etc., with every-
one, and we'll reward you with a colorful, appetiz-
ing, official AmigaWorld T-shirt. (Just remember to
tell us your size,)
Send it in, no matter how outrageous, clever,
humorous or bizarre. We will read anything, but we
won't return it, so keep a copy for yourself, in cases
of duplication, T-shirts are awarded on a first come,
first serve basts.
So, put on your thinking berets and rush those
suggestions to:
Hors d'oeuvres
AmigaWorld editorial
80 Elm Street
Peterborough, NH 03458
88 July/August 1987
|\j\3VlBOJ— -
Expa
(no soldering) Board
a 4" x 8.3" case
Rarnj
nsionj
I
I
I
• Semi kit
comes li
that connects externally to the
BUS expansion port on the
right side of the Amiga®
• The Jumbo Ram board contains I
all control ciicuitry chips, but
no RAM. Add 16 41256-15
RAM chips for 1/2 megabyte.
Add 32 41255-15 RAM chips
for 1 megabyte
• Software auto-installs for 1.1 or I
1.2, disk provided. (Will not
auto-install unless you tell it to ■
through software If your other
software doesn't support extra
memory, you can disable the
board, through software thus
saving you from having to
remove the board each time
you run that software.
• No wait states, fast memory
will not slow operating system.
• Pass through lor stacking
memory boards is an option
(available in May, $40.00
includes installation) Additional
Jumbo Ram boards require
additional power supplies. Power i
supplies $40.00, available April
15, 1987,
• Jumbo Ram board enhances
VIP Professional, Draw, Oigi
View, Animator, Lattice and
many others. (Information on
Side Car unavailable until we ■
have one to test!)
• Ram chips available at
prevailing prices. 6 month
warranty replacement. ZSTI
Jumbo Ram $199.95. s 4 h sa so CS J
Amiaa ts a • ol CommodOFe Electronics |
I CARDINAL SOFTWARE 0fdir 7o „ FfM
U840 Build Afrltrlea Orln» n/\f\ lift C4.AE I
jjoodj^jj. v^jjij i_ 800-762-5 645 |
Circle 170 on Reader Service card-
I
«j |
1-800-622-DISK
Diskettes Boxed Bulk
Sony 3.5' DS 15.80 1.34
Sony 3.5" SS 10.60 .99
Fuji 3.5" DS 15.80 1.34
Fuji 3.5" SS 10.60 .99
AmigaDiskDS 14.50 1.25
AmigaDiskSS 9.90 .95
Software
Diga $49 Fairy Tale Adv. $30
VisiWrite $89 Publisher $115
Scribble $57 Printmaster + $30
Superbase $89 A Copier $25
Accessories
Magic Pad Mouse Pad 10.95
The Library Disk Holder 26.00
The Easel Disk Holder 14.00
Disk File/30 6.95
Teakwood Fite/45/90 20.00/29.00
To order, call 1 -800-6 22-DISK, 512-473-5393
Hours: 8am-6pm CST
Visa,MasterCard,C.O.D.,POs,Checks
$35 minimum on all orders.
Prices are subject to change.
Items are subject to availability.
Ask lor our software product list.
Vision Technologies
2200 Guadalupe Austin TX 78705
Circle 185 on Reader Service card.
The Amiga Connection
AMIGA COMPUTERS
AMIGA SYSTEM PACKAGES
Amiga 500. Amiga 1000, Amiga 2000
CALL FOR PRICE AND CONFIGURATION
Genlock Interface ..,$249.00
256K RAM Expansion 149.00
Amega Board w/OK 249.00
Sidecar 599.00
ACCESSORIES
DATA SHIELD
300 Watt Backup 379.00
500 Wall Backup 589.00
Turbo 350 Wall Backup 449.00
P150 Power Director w/Modem 119.00
SB5 Surge Protector 69.99
FIFTH GENERATION
Logical Connection 256K 299.00
KALAMAR DESIGNS
3>/z" Disk Cabinet - Teak 14.99
5V4" Disk Cabinet - Teak 19.99
NEW TEK INC.
Digi-View 169.00
Digi-Paint.... 52.99
MONITORS
AMDEK
Color 600 Hi-Res (640x240) 399.00
MAGNAVOX
515 RGB/Composite 289.00
643 14" RGB 419.00
NEC
JC 1401 Multisync/RGB In Stock
ZENITH
2VM 1220/1230 (ea.) S99.99
ZVM 1330 16 color RGB 459.00
AMIGA
1080 Hi-Res Color 269.00
MODEMS
ANCHOR
Volksmodem 300/1200 139.00
Signalman Express 1200 EXT 199.00
Lightning 2400 Baud EXT 319.00
HAYES
Smartmodem 300 139.00
Smartmodem 1200 389.00
Smartmodem 2400 599.00
COMMODORE
Amiga 1680-1200 BPS 179.00
PRACTICAL PERIPHERALS
1200 BPS External 15S.00
PRINTERS
EPSON EX800
w/Color Option
$47900
$52900
EPSON
LX-86 120 cps 239.00
FX-85, FX-286 Call
EX-800. EX-1000 Call
LO-800, LO-1000, LQ-2500 Call
HI80 4 Pen Plotter 359.00
Free book w/purchase
HEWLETT PACKARD
Think Jet 399.00
JUKI
5510C Color Dot Matrix Call
6000 12 cps Daisywheel Call
6100 18 cps Daisywheel Call
6200 30 cps Wide Carriage Call
6300 40 cps Wide Carriage Call
OKIDATA
Okimate 20 Color Printer 129.00
ML-182 120 cps Dot Matrix 219.00
ML-192 160 cps Dot Matrix 339,00
ML-193 + , ML-292 + , ML-293 + Call
STAR IY1ICRONICS
NL-10 Font Compatible Call
NX-10 120 cps Dot Matrix 219.00
TOSHIBA
P321 24 Wire 80 column 479.00
P341 24 Wire 136 column 589.00
P351 24 Wire 136 column 1049.00
DISK DRIVES
COMMODORE
Amiga 1010 3V2" 219.00
Amiga 1020 5Vt" 189.00
XEBEC
20 MB for Amiga 899.00
DISKETTES
MAXELL
3V 2 " DS/DD (10) 21.49
SV*" DS/DD (10) 10.99
SONY
3V 2 " DS/DD (5 w/case) 9.99
3Vi" DS/DD (10) 20.49
SW DS/DD (10) 9.99
FLIP 'N FILE
25 Disk Tub 3Vi" 9.99
GENERIC
3Vj" DS/DD (10) 19.99
3V 2 " DS/DD Bulk 50 Pack 89.99
SOFTWARE
Micro Systems
ORGANIZE $6499
ACCESS
Leader Board Golf 29.99
Tournament Disk 19.99
ACTIV1SION
Borrowed Time 32.99
Hacker 32.99
AEGIS DEVELOPMENT
Animation/Images 99.00
Draw 139.00
Draw + 189.00
Impact 139.00
Sonix 59.99
COMMODORE
Textcraft w/Graphic Craft 59.99
Lattice "C" 119.00
Assembler 79.99
Enhancer DOS 1.2 14.99
DISCOVERY SOFTWARE
Marauder Back-up 32.99
ELECTRONIC ARTS
Deiuxe Paint 67.99
Archon 31.99
One on One 31.99
Sky Fox 31.99
Financial Cookbook 37.99
Seven Cities of Gold 31.99
Arctic Fox 31.99
Deluxe Print 74.99
Chessmaster 2000 34.99
Instant Music 34.99
Deluxe Video 67.99
Deluxe Music 67.99
INFOCOM
Hitchhiker's Guide 31.99
Spellbreaker 31.99
Planetfall 31.99
Witness 31.99
MEGASOFT LTD
A-Copier 29.99
MICRO ILLUSIONS
Dynamic-Cad 349.00
MINDSCAPE
Halley Project 31.99
Deja Vu 34.99
Keyboard Cadet 29.99
MICRO SYSTEMS
Analyze Version 2.0 119.00
Scribble 64.99
On-Line/Comm 49.99
SUBLOGIC
Flight Simulator II 37.99
V.I.P.
V.I. P. Professional 139.00
COMPUTER MAIL ORDER
In the U.S.A. and Canada
Call toll-free: 1 800 233-8950
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ware will be replaced with same item only. All ilems subject to availability and price change. AH
sales final, returned shipments are subject to restocking lee.
Circle 41 on Reader Service card
from p. 22
i.istmg 1. aueliotools.r
/* aud iotools.c — includes
/*' Copyright 1987, Robert A
/* Lattice (3.03 or 3.10):
f* Manx (3.40A with patch v
<:c +1. ram:audiotools.c
(f define DEBUG 1
^include "exec/types. h"
//include "exec/memory .h"
#includc "devices/audio, h"
(tinclude "ram:audiotools.h"
^include "ram:globals.c"
raainC )
(
LONG i, channel, error;
I ii i vAudioO ;
for(i=0; i<4; i++)
( channel = GetChannel(
if (channel == -1) fin
Here, must save globuls
key| i ] = gotkey ; /*
unit[i] = gotunit;/*
error = StopChannel(
if(error)
[ printf ("error in s
sample main routine */
. Peck, All Rights Reserved */
lc -v-L ram:audiotools.c */
1.3):
In +A ram:audiotools.o c.lib */
/
i);
ishupC'cannot get a channel!");
from gotkey, gotunit */
save allocation key */
save unit value */
channel) ;
topping channel =
%ld\n", error);
f inisbup( "StopChannel did not work as expected");
}
/* (channel, note, waveform, vol, dur, pri, mess) */
for(i=0; i<95; i++)
(
Play?iote(0, i, wl, 32, 250, 0, 0);
/* all notes, 1/4 sec, */
)
error = StartChannel (0) ;
Delay(800); /* let most of them play...
this waits 16 seconds */
for(i=l; i<4; i++)
( error = StartChannel(i) ;
lf(error) print f("error starting channel =
XI d\n", error) ;:
)
PlayNoce(0, 23, w] , 32, 2000, 0, 0)
PlayNote(l, 27, w2, 32, 2300, 0, 0)
PlayNote(2, 30, w3, 32, 2600, 0, 0)
PlayNote(3, 35, wl, 32, 2900, 0, 0)
FinishAudio( ) ;
return(O) ;
) /* end of main( ) */
/* ALL ROUTINES THAT FOLLOW MAKE UP THE SOUND LIBRARY */
JnitAudioQ
(
int error,!; /* Declare all message blocks available */
for(i=0; KAUDBUFFERS; i++) ( inuse[i] = NO; )
/* Open device but don't allocate channels */
ipenlOH. ioa_Leni>l h - i ; ■' (no allocation table) */
error = OpenDeviceC'audio. device" ,0,&openIOB,0) ;
if (error) finishup ("audio device won't open!"};
/* Get the device address for later use */
device = openlOB. ioa_Request ,io_Device;
/* Create ports for replies from channels as well as one
to be used for the control and synchonous functions */
Eor( L=0; i<4; i++)
[auReplyPort » CreatePort(0,0) :
replyPortfi] = auReplyPort;
if(auReplyPort == 0) finishup("cannot create a port!");
chipaudiofi] =0; /* have not yet created the waves */
datalength[i] = 1 ; /* used for custom sound samples */
I
controlPort = CreatePort(O.O) ;
if(controlPort == 0)
finishup( "can't create control port");
error = MakeWavesO;
if (error == -1) finishupf "waves no fit in RAM");
for(i=0; 1<4; i++)
( dynaraix(i] =0; ) /* no dynamic 1/0 blocks
allocated for any channel thus far »/
return(O) ;
] /* end InitAudio */
FinishAudio( )
(
LONG i;
struct ExtlOB *iob;
for(i=0; KAUDBUFFERS; i++)
( if(inuse[i] == STES)
( /* make sure all global blocks are done */
WaitI0(&audbuf fer[ i ] ) ;
#ifdef DEBUG
printf("All global I/O blocks are done\n");
printf("channels 0,1,2,3 have %1d.%1d.%1d.%1d
blocks in play\n",dynamix[0] , dynamix[l],
dynamix[2], dynamix[3]);
#endif DEBUG
for(i=0; 1<4; i++)
iff dyriiiini x[ i ]) /* Tf this channel still playing a
dynamically allocated block, wait for all messages to
return before the program exits. */
<
emptyit:
iob = (struct ExtlOB *)GetMsg(replyPort[ i ] ) ;
if(iob == && dynamix[i] != 0) /*if no message*/
(WaifPort(replyPort) ; /*arrived wait for I/O*/
goto emptyit; /*done and empty the port*/
]
FreeI0B(iob,i)T
if(dvnamix[i ] \- 0) goto emptyit;
)
}
for(i=0; i<4; i++) FreeChannel(i) ;
f inishup( "Done! \n") ;
return(O) ;
} /* end FinishAudio */
finishup( string)
(
int i;
if(device) CloseDevircfKopeiilOR) ;
printf ("clused the device\n");
for(i=0; i<4; i++)
{ if(chipaudio(i]) FreeMem(chipaudio[i ] ,WAVES_T0TAL) ;
if ( replyPortfi]) DeletePort(replyPort[ i J);
)
if (controlPort) DeletcPort(controlPort ) ;
printf("%ls\n", string);
exit(O);
return(O) ;
) /* end finishup */
int
ControlChannel (channel ,
WORD channel ;
WORD command;
:ommand)
I
LONG rtn;
struct ExtlOB *iob, controlIOB;
iob = ScontrolIOB;
iob->lou_Request.io_Device = device;
iob->ioa_Request ,io_Message.mn_ReplyPnrt =
controlPort ;
Ini tBlock( iob, channel) ;
/* init it for CMD_WRITE, then change */
iob->ioa_Request . io_Command » command;
iob->ioa_Request.io_FIags = IOFjQUICK;
BeginlO(iob);
WaitH)(iob);
90 July/August 1987
rLn = ((LONG)(iob->ioa_Request.io_Error));
return(rtn) ;
return(O) ;
} /* end ControlChannel */
struct ExtlOB *
GetlOB(ch)
LONG ch;
(
WORD i,use_reply;
struct ExtlOB *iob;
/* in case we need to allocate one */
ReEmployIGB();
/* find already used ones and free them */
/* so that when we do a get... */
if(ch == -1) use_reply = 0; /* reply port to use */
else uso_replv = ch;
for(i=0; KAUDBUFFERS; i++)
( if(inuse[i] = NO)
( inusefij = YES;
audtmf fer[ i ] . ioa_Request . io_Device = device;
;'! ':'■":: < <-i | i | . : .: n_K> .■.;:]>■:■ I . i ri_!-U>.ss;iKt' .r.n_Ke| 1 vl'url =
replyPortf use_reply] ;
audbuf fer[ i j .ioa_Request . io_Message,mn^Length = i;
audbuf fer[i ] .ioa_Request . io_Message.mn_Node. In Name =
globalnarne;
#ifdef DEBUG
printf ("Using a global iob\n");
(fend if DEBUG
return(Saudbuf fer[ i ] ) ;
)
/* if all globals are in use, have to allocate one */
iob = (struct ExtlOB *)Al]ocMem(sizeof(
struct ExtlOB), MEMF_CLEAR);
if (iob == 0) return(O); /* ouL of memory */
else
[ iob->ioa_Request.io_Device = device;
iob->ioa_Request . io_Message.mn_ReplyPort =
replyPort[use_reply]
iob->ioa_Request . io_Message.mn_JJode. In Name =
dynamicname
iob->ioa_Request .io_Message.mn Length =
dynamix[ use_reply ]
dynamix[use_reply] += 1;
/* add 1 to number allocated for a specific channel*/
#ifdef DEBUG
printf ("Allocated a new dynamic iobW);
Send if DEBUG
rettirn( iob) ;
return(O) ;
) /* end GetlOB */
/* ReEmploylOB - look at all of the reply ports and if
any IOBs hanging around with nothing to do, free them. */
ReEmploylOBO
I
LONG i;
struct MsgPort *mp;
struct ExtlOB *iob;
for(i=0; i<4; i++)
(* remove all iob's from all ports */
(mp = replyPort[i ] ;
while( (iob = (struct ExtlOB *)GetMsg(mp)) != 0)
#ifdef DEBUG
printf ("type of iob freed is: %ls\n",
iob->ioa_Request . io_Message ,mn_Node . ln_Name) ;
printf("its identifier value is: %ld\n",
iob->ioa_Request,io Message. mn Length);
#endif DEBUG
FreeIOB(iob, i);
)
]
return(O) ;
) /* end ReEmploylOB */
/* Free a global or an allocated IOB */
int
FORMS IN FLIGHT
3D DRAWING AND ANIMATION
FORMS IN FLIGHT Is e powerful, easy to use, 3D graphics package
for Amiga, h was designed for both the serious and casual user.
-LIBRARY OBJECTS
- SURFACE OF REVOLUTION
- RED/BLUE STEREO IMAGES
- PLOTTER SUPPORT (HP-GL)
- DYNAMIC MEMORY ALLOCATION
- EFFICIENT HIDDEN LINE REMOVAL
- UNATTENDED FRAME GENERATION
- SURFACE EXTRUSIONS, ANY ANGLE
- INTERCHANGEABLE 2D/3D DRAWING
- INDEPENDANT OBJECT MODIFICATION
- SPLINES, POLYGONS, FREE-HAND, SNAP
- COMPLEX OBJECT NESTING AND MOTION
- PARTIAL OBJECT RENDERING CAPABILITY
- COPY (MIRROR.FROMH'O.ROTATION.DYNAMIC)
- VARIABLE SHADING (MANY SOURCES, NO SHADOWS)
- PLAYBACK - VARIOUS RESOLUTIONS/COLOR COMBINATIONS
- DYNAMIC OBSERVER MOVEMENT AND PERSPECTIVE CONTROL
(ROTATE,PAN,ROLL,MAGNIFY,MOVE IN/OUT, MOVABLE LOOK PT)
REQUIRES AT LEAST 1 MB RAM $79 < N0TC0PV P1°TECTE
D)
MICRO MAGIC
Suite 320B
261 Hnmlllon Av.
Pj)Jo_Alto J jr;A9130J
(415) 327-9107
* AMIGA la ■ r&glilartid Iradotnsrk ol Commadorn-AjTifgH fnc.
Circle 121 on Reader Service card.
FREE!
COMMUNICATION SOFTWARE
AND COMPUSERVE ACCESS TIME
WITH EACH MODEM
PROGRAMS AVAILADLE:
SPELLCRAFT— SPELLING CHECKER,
MERGEMASTER— MAIL/ INFO INSERTION
Coll for pricing on Covers and Cables for your System.
To Order
call for free catalogue
credsj Cares veri=i£d
500-232-6342
(NUDE UTAH 301-752-2642
We beat ony
advertised price.
MEGATRONICS. INC. P.O. BOX 3344, LOGAN, UTAH 64321
Circle 160 on Reader Service card.
AmigaWorld 91
FreeIOB(iob, ch)
struct ExtlOB *iob;
LONG ch; f* which channel was it attached to? */
(
WORD i;
if (iob->ioa_Request . Io_Message.mn_Node.ln_Name ==
dynamicname)
( FreeMeraCiob, sizeof (struct ExtlOB) );
if (dynamix[ch] ) dynamix[ch] -= 1;
/* subtract one if nonzero */
return(OL) ;
1
else if (iob->ioa_Request .io_Message.m[]_Node.ln_Name
== globalname)
( i = iob->ioa__Request , io_Message.mn_Length;
#ifdef DEBUG
printf ("Freeing global buffer numbered %ld\n",i);
# etui if DEBUG
ll(i •' AUDBUFFF.RS)
(inuse[i] = NO; /' : frees this one for reuse */
)
relurn(OL) ;
)
/* if get here, names don't match, something is wrong. */
else (printf ("FreelOB: names don't match...
unknown errorW);
rei urn(-l) ;/* unknown source of I0B fed to routine. */
1
return(O) ;
) /* end FreelOB */
/* Initialize an audio I/O block for
default CMDJWRITE operation. */
int
Tni tBlock(iob, channel)
struct ExtlOB Hob;
WORD channel ;
(
/* Device and ReplyPort fields have been
initialized by GetlOB */
iob->ioa_Request . io_IInit = unit[channel ] ;
/* Allocation key */
iob-Moa_AllocKey = key[ channel ] ;
/* Where's the waveform?
...Just be sure is in MEMF_CHIPH! */
/* USER initializes datalength[ch] before calling
this; for sampled sound command write operation. */
iob->ioa_Data = chipaudio[channel ] ;
iob->ioa_Length = datalength[channel ] ;
/* Another routine, must initialize:
period ioa_Period
vo 1 ume i oa_V o 1 ume
cycles ioa_Cycles
message ioa_Wri teMessage */
/* Default command type is CMDJJRITE */
iob->ioa Request . io_Command = CMD_WRITE;
/• If 10F_QUICK is zeroed, this would affect the
period and vol. If a CMD_WRITE, it queues if another
note is already playing. We queue CMD_WRITES. */
iob->ioa_Request". io_Flags = ADIOF_PERV0L;
return(O) ;
) /* end InitBlock */
/* To request "any" channel, use ch = -1 ; To request
a specific channel, use ch = (0, 1, 2 or '3(; */
int
GetChannel(ch)
LONG ch;
(
int error, value;
struct ExtlOB *iob, controlIOB;
iol> = ScontrolIOB;
iol>-'-iiifi_Roquesl . ii.!_l)evice = device;
iob->ioa_Request. io_Mcssage.mn_ReplyPort =
controlPort;
lnitBlock(iob,0);
/* init it for CMD_WRITE, then change */
iob->ioa_Requesl . io_Message.mn_Node. 1 n_Pri = 20;
nil inii Reqiiesl.iu Guiiimnml - A1X',MI1_AI LOGATL;
f(ch == -1)
iob->ioa_Data = (UBYTE
iob->ioa_Length = 4;
•')anychan;
else if(ch >=0 SS ch <= 3)
iob->ioa_Data = (UBYTE *)(&anychan[ch]);
iob->ioa_Length = 1 ;
else
/* chose a bad channel number; cannot allocate it #/
( return(-i);
)
iob->ioa_Request.io_Flags = ADI0F_N0WAIT | I0F_QUICK;
BeginlO(iob);
error = Wat tlO(iob) ;/* returns nonzero if error */
if(!(ioh->ioaJ?equest.io_Flags & I0F_QU1GK))
(GetMsg(iob->±oa_Request.io_Message.mn_ReplyPort) ;
)
if( error)
{ return(-l);
)
gotunit = (iob->ioa_Request . io_Unit) ;
gotkey = (iob->ioa_Al locKey);
switch((LONG)(iob->ioa_Request .io_Unit ) )
{ case 1
case 2
value =
value =
0;
break;
break;
case 4
case 8
default
I
return(va
return(O) ;
) /* end Get(
value =
value =
value =
■ .
!;
-1 :
hi i'ik :
break;
break;
Lue);
Channel */
int
FreeGhannel (ch)
LONG ch;
(
int error;
struct ExtlOB *iob, controlIOB;
iob = ScontrolTOB;
iob->ioa_Request.io_Device = device;
iob->ioa_Request.io_Message,mn_ReplyPort =
controlPort;
InitB!ock(iob,ch) ;
/* init it for CMDJJRITE, then change */
/* (pick up unit and key value for channel) */
iob->ioa_Request.io_Command = ADCMD_FREE;
iob->ioa_Request . io__Flags =
ADI0F_N0WAIT | IQF_QUICK:
BeginlO(ioh);
error = WaitTO(iob);
/* returns nonzero if error */
if(!(iob->ioa_Request.io_Flags & I0F_QUICK))
( GetMsg( iob->ioa_Request . io_Message.mn_ReplyPort) ;
!
if (error)
( return(-l);
!
return(O) ;
) /* end FreeChannel) */
/* THE FOLLOWING ROUTINES ARE PARAPHRASED FROM A USENET
and BIX POSTING MADE IN 1985 BY STEVEN A. BENNETT.
/* I have modified his routines to queue the audio
commands in place of starting Torever-duration and
canceling each note. Many of his original comments
have been incorporated into the article.
*/
/* PlayNote(...) */
/* Starts a sound on the channel with specified
period and volume. This nice little routine takes
a note and plays it on the given voice. The note
is basically an integer from to 11 (c to b) plus
12 per octave above the first and lowest.
* The waveform to use is determined by adding an
index (woffsetsf]) dependant on the octave.
* The length of the waveform (in wlen[l) is
likewise dependant on the octave. Note that
*/
92 July/August 1987
octaves start with zero, not one.
*/
int
PlayNote(channel, note, wf, vol, duration,
priority, message)
char *wf; /* waveform to use */
LONG vol, channel, duration, note;
/* specific note number */
LONG priority;
struct Message ^message;
(
LONG per, len, oct;
/* period, length of waveform, which octave */
char *wavepointer ;
/* where to find start of waveform */
struct ExtlOB *iob;
int frequency;
iob = GetTOB(channel);
ifCiob != 0)
[
InitBlock(iob, channel); /* set up for CMD_WRITE */
oct = note / 12;
wavepointer = wf 4 wof fsets[oct ] ;
len = wlenfoct] ;
per = perval[note % 12];
/* Set the parameters */
iob->ioa_Data = (UBYTE *)wavepointer;
iob->ioa__Lengt.h = len;
iob->ioa_Period = per;
iob->ioa_Volume = vol;
/* Look at the frequency that it is to
play by backwards calc, */
frequency = 3579545 / (len * per);
/* Calculate cycles from duration in lOOOths
of a second. Multiply all-in-one to maintain max
precision possible (all integer arithmetic.) */
iob->ioa_Cycles ■
((LONG)(frequencv * duration)/1000) ;
BeginlO(iob);
return(O) ;
[
else
{ return(-l);
/* all went ok */
f* couldnt get IOB */
)
return(O) ;
) /■■' end PlayNote */
/* SetPV(channel, per, vol)
int channel, per, vol; */
int
SetPV(channel , per, vol)
int channel, per, vol;
(
int error;
struct ExtlOB *iob, controlIOB;
iob = ScontrolIOB;
iob->ioa_Request . io_Device = device;
iob->ioa_Request . io_Message,mn ReplyPort =
controlPort ;
InitBlock(iob, channel); /* set up for CMD_WRITE*/
iob->ioa_Period = per;
iob->ioa_Volume = vol;
iob->ioa_Request.io_Command = ADCMD_PERVOL;
iob->ioa_Request.io_Elags = I0F_Ql!ICK | ADI0F_PERV0L;
BeginlO(iob);
/* This one will be synchronous; affects whatever
is playing on this channel at this time. */
error = WaitlO(iob);
/* OK to wait, since it will return */
return(error); /* copy of io_Error field; should be */
return(O) ;
) /* end SetPV */
f* SetWaves(wl, w2, w3): create first sawtooth, triangle
and square wave */
SetWaves(wI, w2, w3)
UBYTE *wl, *w2, *w3;
5
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int i, increment, value, sqvalue;
value = 0; increment = 2;
sqvalue = 127;
for (i = 0; i < BIGJVAVE; ++i)
{
wl[i] = i; /* do the sawtooth */
if(i > 62 && i < 180) increment = -2;
else
if(i ■>= 180) increment ■ 2;
w2[i] = value; value += increment;
/* triangle wave */
if Ci > 126) sqvalue = -127;
w3[ i ] = sqvalue;
)
return(O) ;
) /* end SetWaves */
/* iob msg packets before need Lo allot */
tfdefine YES 1L
#define NO 0L
/* In a later release, ExtlOB will be defined exactly
as lOAudio but with a few more items tacked on at
the end. This minimizes changes to existing
routines when we later extend the structure. */
#define Ext IOB IOAudio
/* a few forward declarations */
extern struct ExtlOB *GetIOB();
extern ant FreelOBQ;
extern int GetChannel( ) ;
extern int GetStereoPairC ) ;
extern int InitBlockO;
ext on si rui t MsgPort *Creal ePort ( ) ;
/* ExpandKave(wfp) - replicate waves in
decreasing sample sizes... BYTE *wfp; */
ExpandWave(wfp)
BYTE *wfp;
(
int i, j, rate;
BYTE *tptr;
rate = 1 ;
tptr = wfp + BIG_WAVE;
for (i - 0; i < NBRJvWES - 1; ++i)
(
rate *= 2;
for (j = 0; j < BIG_UAVE; j += rate)
*tptr++ = wfp[ j] ;
]
return(O) ;
( /* end ExpandWave */
/* MakeWavesC) Just makes a sawtooth, triangle
and square wave in chip mem and expands them. */
int
MakeWavesC )
(
/* allocate the memory for the waveforms. */
wl = (UBYTE *)AllocMem(WAVES_T0TAL, MEMF_CHIP)
w2 = (UBYTE *)AllocMem(WAVES_T0TAL, MEMF_CHIP)
w3 = (UBYTE *)AllocMem(WAVES_T0TAL, MEMF_CHIP)
if (wl == NULL || w2 == NULL | | w3 — NULL)
return(-l); /* ran out of memory! */
/* get and expand the waveforms */
SetWaves(wl, w2, w3) ;
ExpandWave (wl ) ; chipaudio[0]=wl ;
ExpandWave(w2) ; chipaudio[ 1 ]=w2;
ExpandWave (w3) ; chipaudio[ 2]=w3;
return(O) ;
) f* end MakeWaves */
/* END AUDI0T00LS.C */
Listing 2. audiotools.k
/* audiotools.h */
#define StartChannel(c) ControlChannelfc, CMD_START)
^define StopChannel(c) ControlChannel(c, CMD_ST0P)
*define ResetChannel(c) ControlChannelfc, CMD_RESET)
^define FlushChannel(c) ControlChannelfc, CMD_FLUSH)
^define BIG_WAVE 256L
/* size of biggest waveform */
^define NBRJJAVES 7L
/* number of waves per instrument */
^define WAVESJT0TAL 1024L
/* alloc size for instrument's waves */
#define DEFAULT DURATION 500L
/* 500/T000ths of a second default */
#define AUDBUFFERS 20L
Listing 3. globals.c
/* globals.c */
struct IOAudio openlOB;
/* IOB to open and close the device */
struct MsgPort *auReplyPort ; /* temporary pointer */
struct MsgPort *controlPort ;
/* Port for ControlChannel functions */
char *globalname = "global";
/* the name for global lOB's */
char *dynamicname = "dynamic";
/ ::: the name for dynamic lOB's */
UBYTE stereostuff[4] = ( 3. 5, 10, 12 |;
/* channel masks for stereo */
UBYTE anychan[4| - { 1, 2, 4, 8 )i
/* channel masks for mono */
/* Resolve all externals */
struct ExtlOB audbuf fer[AUDBUFFERS] ;
/* globals to build-in */
'■■\\V\Y_ *chipaudio[4]:
/* pointers to waveforms in CHIP RAM */
struct L'n i I *unit[4];
/* global pointers to Units */
struct Device *device;
/* global pointer to audio device */
LONG datalength[4];
/* length of the data for a wave */
struct MsgPort *roplyPort [ 4 1 ;
/* one ReplvPort per channel */
BYTE inuse[ AUDBUFFERS ] ;
/* keep track of globals in-use */
WORD key [4];
/* global value for alloc keys */
struct Unit *gotunit;
/* returned unit value */
WORD got key;
/* returned allocation key */
LONG dynamix[4];
/* counters for how many dynamically
allocated audio message I/O blocks */
/* Each waveform buffer contains 8 octaves of the
wave. The offset values specify where in the buffer
the proper waveform table for that octave begins. */
int woffsetsf] = ( 0, 256, 384, 448, 480,
496, 504, 508, 510 );
/* Length of each waveform within a buffer */
int wlen[] = ( 25&. 128 . 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1 };
/* Period value to go with the notes in an octave. */
int perval[] = ( 428, 404, 381, 360, 339, 320,
302, 285, 269, 254, 240, 226, 214 };
UBYTE *wl , *w2, *w3;
BYTE *owptr[4] = { NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL );
extern struct Message *GetMsg;
extern aptr AllocMem;
94 July/August 1987
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Images digitized and returned on disk, using standard IFF format. Images cropped unless full
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For a free list, send a business size SASE to:
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AmigaWorld 95
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Customer Service Manager, or call 1-800-441-4403.
List of Advertisers
Reader
Service
Number
178 ASDG, Inc., 58
175 AbSoft, 50
54 Access Associates, 71
74 Activision, 7
128 Amiga Public Domain Connection, 30
32 BEST, Inc., 22
163 Brown-Wagh Publishing, Inc., 49
165 Brown-Wagh Publishing, Inc., 51
42 Byte By Byte, CIV
59 C Ltd., 2
170 Cardinal Software, 88
69 Complete Data Automation, 93
53 CompuServe, 15
207 Computer Best, 52
41 Computer Mail Order, 89
196 Creative Microsystems, 10
202 Delta Research, 93
28 Digital Creations, 16
89 Discovery Software, 9
156 Disk Publication, 16
51 Finally Software, 75
35 Foto-Wear, 78
135 Futuresoft Applications, 57
142 Go AMIGO, 59
26 Go AMIGO, 60, 61
747 I.S.M., Inc., 16
4 Infinity Software, 47
188 Jumpdisk, 80
7 73 KJ Computers, 50
23 Lattice, Inc., 1
48 M.W. Ruth Company. 80
31 Manx, 24
180 Megatronics, 91
56 Meridian Software, 17
16 Metacomco Software, 4
44 Micro Computer Services, 81
138 Micro Illusion, CM
37 Micro Illusion, CHI
103 Micro Limits, 88
121 Micro Magic, 91
703 MicroBotics, 79
27 MicroSearch, 73
725 Micro-Systems Software, 39
Reader
Service
Number
210 Mills Industries, 83
52 Mimetics, 63
38 New Horizons Software, 31
102 Newtek, 27
7 79 Newtek, 23
75 Oxxi, 13
759 Progressive Peripherals & Soft., 42
737 Progressive Peripherals & Soft., 67
67 Sedona Software, 76
134 Software Shop, 87
10 Software Visions, 29
116 Star Flite Telemarketing, 40
208 Supra Corporation, 41
66 True Basic Inc., 85
77 Unicorn Software, 58
755 Vision Technologies, 88
64 Word Perfect, 5
176 World of Commodore, 4
49 Xebec, 11
Xerox, Inc, 77
7 Zirkonics. 33
* This advertiser prefers to be
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This index is provided as an
additional service. The publisher
does not assume liability for errors
or omissions.
96 July/August 1987
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17408 Cbatsworth St., Granada Hills, CA 91344, inside CA 818/360-3715 • outside CA 800/522-2041 • FAX 818/360-1464
There's a slim difference
between the ordinary and the
extraordinary . . . PAL JR.
1 MByte FAST RAM at C00000
No wait state memory
Battery backed clock/calendar
Open ZORRO expansion slot
Entire system auto-configures
Quiet fan for cooling
20 MByte PAL JR. SI, 495
40 MByte PAL JR. ■ S 1,995
80 MByte PAL JR. CALL
2/8 MByte Garganturam board S 835
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"The PAL JR. is clearly the
highest performance Amiga
hard disk."
John Foust
Amazing Computing
"Designed for the power
user ... A solid well built
piece of hardware."
Bruce Webster
Byte Magazine
"The PAL System is extremely
well built and is the fastest
hard disk system available
for the Amiga. It's also
remarkably easy to install."
Louis Wallace
Amiga World Contributing
Editor
Create your own universe with SCULPT 3-D
Brings the power of RAY TRACING to the Amiga
Supports overscan display for full screen video
Full Intuition interface • • Powerful as packages costing thousands of dollars more
Five IFF modes including HAM • • Written by Eric Graham a la "Robot Juggler"
Create images in TRUE 3-D • • Suggested Retail only S99.95
Watch for ANIMATE 3-D later this summer
BYTE by BYTE.
Arboretum Plaza II 9442 Capital of Texas Highway North Suite 150 Austin, TX 78759 (512)343-4357
Circle 42 on Header Service card
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